Frank Bianchi graduated from the Pratt Institute and was selected for General Motors’ design school in 1939. Over his career he worked at Ford, GM, Packard, and Chrysler mainly as a sketch artist and retired in 1982. In his oral history, Bianchi discusses his long career beginning with his time at Pratt and the GM design school. In 1941, he started working at Ford Motor Company under Gil Spear but left during WWII to join the Navy. After the war, he returned to GM in the Buick studio and in 1947 left to work with Dick Teague at Packard. He discusses his return to Ford Motor Company in 1950 working on the first Continental Mk II. He left Ford and joined Chrysler in the early 1950s eventually moving to the Advanced studio designing Chrysler and Imperial vehicles. For 10 years he headed Chrysler’s design training program. He later worked briefly at Sunberg-Ferrar and International Harvester before returning to Ford in the late 1960s under David Ash in the Corporate Projects studio.
Collection contains 1 cassette, 1 compact disc, 1 WAV files, 1 MP3, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, 1 Word transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 21, 2021 and December 3, 2024.
Related item:
Frank A. Bianchi Papers, 1948-1953 (PDF of finding aid)
R.C.9 Automotive Design Drawing Collection
Copyright has been transferred to The Henry Ford by the donor. Copyright for some items in the collection may still be held by their respective creator(s).