LaGassey’s automotive design career started at General Motors in 1942 working in the Oldsmobile studio. He joined the Air Force during WWII and attended the Pratt Institute when he returned. In 1946, he returned to GM working in various studios as well as public relation work. In 1955, he joined Chrysler as the chief designer of the Dodge and Plymouth studio. He left Chrysler in 1960 to form a freelance studio with Don Reed and Fred Adickes. In 1963, LaGassey joined Ford Motor Company working as a manager in several studios including Special Projects, Interiors, and did work in public relations. LaGassey left Ford in 1979 and dedicated his full time to his work teaching automotive design at the College for Creative Studies, which he had been doing since 1959. LaGassey’s oral history is more of a series of stories of people and events in his long automotive career rather than a focus on the projects and vehicles he worked on. He begins with his time at GM and tells several entertaining stories about Harley Earl, the way he ran the design department and interacted with employees. He worked closely with Earl during his time at GM and gives several vignettes which give insight into Earl. He goes on to speak about his time at Chrysler, the competition between Virgil Exner and Bill Schmidt and problems within the organization. LaGassey speaks critically of his time at Ford, his perceived mismanagement of the design teams, and little room for growth, but also discusses his design work on several cars including the J car, long-nose T-birds, and Maverick. He wraps up his oral history discussing his long association with the College for Creative Studies and his work teaching and building their automotive design program from scratch.

Collection contains 1 .25" tape, 6 cassettes, 5 WAV files, 10 MP3 files, 3 loose transcripts, and 1 PDF transcript.

Ford Times, October 1963, The New Faces of Ford, Fairlane, Falcon and Thunderbird for 1964 (paintings by LaGassey)