Charles Phaneuf attended Meinzinger's Art School and in 1947 was hired at Kaiser-Frazer. In 1948, he moved to Packard, and in 1952 was hired at Ford Motor Company. He worked in the Corporate Projects studio from 1952-1971, working on a variety of vehicles including playing a key role in developing the Mustang. In 1971, he moved to Advanced Design and in 1976 was design manager of the Ford Truck studio. He was named design manager of the Large Car Exteriors studio in 1984, the role he held at the time of this interview. In his oral history, Phaneuf describes his initial foray into design, visiting the Chrysler design studios with his father who was a Dodge truck master mechanic, and his schooling at Cass Tech and Meinzinger's. He talks about his early career at Kaiser-Frazer and Packard, describing the studio, projects he worked on, and designers he worked with. The majority of his oral history focuses on his time at Ford. He begins discussing his first assignment in the Special Projects studio working on the Continental MkII. He goes into great detail about the challenging design atmosphere, working with William Clay Ford, and the design process for the vehicle. In 1956, Phaneuf moved to the Corporate Projects studio working on pre-production and advanced vehicles. He discusses component compatibility efforts and goes into detail about his work on the Mustang. He was named Design Manger in 1967 and moved to the Ford Interiors studio working on the instrument panel for the 1970 Crown Victoria. In 1971, he moved to the Advanced Studio and discusses working on the Fairmount and the limitations the design team had with a reduced number of platforms available due to cost cutting measures. In 1976, he moved to the Truck Studio and discusses how much he enjoyed the freedom of working with trucks and his work on the CL-9000, 1980 F-series, Bronco II, and the Aerostar/Mini Max. Phaneuf moved to Large Car Exteriors in 1984 and was working there when interviewed. He wraps up his oral history discussing changes in design and modeling techniques, particularly the then new computer aided design as well as new product development.

Collection contains 4 cassettes, 4 WAV files, 4 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 2 loose transcripts, and 1 bound transcript. Uploaded July 27, 2021.