30 Written by: Bob Gurr, June 19, 2022 As a 17-year-old fresh industrial design student, just enrolled in August 1949 at the Art Center School in Los Angeles California, Strother MacMinn was one of my instructors. While I was eager to get started drawing cars, Mac insisted we learn very basic and boring stuff. The worst task was to write script lettering with a Thayer & Chandler air brush. I’m left-handed, and script with just a pencil is agony. Mac insisted. Soon, all his students were doing graceful sweeping script, doodling car-like shapes too. But I considered Mac the most unpleasantly strict of all my instructors. Until one day, when he brought in some photos of classic European classic cars of the late 1930s, I asked him if he liked cars. Stunned, I think he disliked my question. From that instant onward we close friends until his passing in 1998 at age 79. I’m now 90, and still remember that first “Mac moment”. As a multi-year Mac student, on thru the years he taught me Concours judging, he was both a buddy-friend and an Icon-God of design integrity. At times he’d leave me awe struck with the importance shape, proportion, perfect surface development, details worked out to perfection. I finally understood the need to start air brush script. Precise diligence in every design thought and action. GM hired me a month before graduation in May 1952. Arriving in Detroit, I found that ex-GM, now Ford designer Frank Hershey had plotted with the Art Center job placement fellow to spirit me quickly into Ford Styling. My GM dream was burned forever! Only two weeks into my assignment with Ford Advanced Styling, I foresaw Detroit to be a disappointing dead end for me. A short stint followed at George Walker Industrial Design, then a return to California after exactly one year and one day as my Detroit car designer dream concluded. But yea, I was back in home in MacMinnLand. Shortly after my return, Mac handed me a design assignment with Detroit Industrial Design consultants Miller & Grisinger. I enjoyed creating a vast number of concept sketches for the 1955 Kaiser and Willys, using the Arcadia California office of Post Publications as my studio. In 1951, Mac had introduced me to Dan Post to help with automotive illustration. Dan published my first book, Automotive Design, in spring 1952, just before I arrived at Ford. Well, that got me the cheeky brat reputation alright! Dan and I published a several more books during the next few years. My car designer days came to an end (or so I thought) when I was called in October 1954 to the animation studios of Walt Disney Productions in Burbank California. The rest became a fantastic 46-year design career with Disney (yes, doing some cars), and later, my own company, GurrDesign, Inc. Mac & The LeMans Coupe — Bob Gurr
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