Philip Bonine, 1962 finalist
When Kids Designed Cars
June / July 2009
Volume 7 Number 3
Chuck Jordan could be the poster boy for the Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild, a national auto design program and competition that General Motors ran for youngsters from the early 1930s to late 1960s. In the 1940s, he was a doodler with an affinity for cars. So his mother sent away for a kit from the Guild. The kits came with instructions on how to design and build a three-dimensional scale-model car, and enter it in the competition.
Jordan didn't enter the first model car he made and a few thereafter. But in 1947, and while a junior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he sent his design to GM and won the competition.
"I thought, boy I'm going to do this and nail it," says Jordan, now 81 and living in Southern California. "And I made the design, carved the wood and made brass parts in the hobby shop at MIT."
GM gave him a $4,000 scholarship and executives told him to give them a call after he graduated. He took the hint, and worked at GM from 1949 until retiring as vice president of design in 1992. Among his accomplishments, he had a hand in designing the 1955 Chevy truck; the last design he worked on was the 1992 Cadillac Seville.
Jordan is one of thousands of people who participated in the Fisher Body Crafstman's Guild. It was a source of fresh ideas, marketing and recruitment for General Motors, and left an indelible mark on the lives of youngsters who participated. The program was shuttered in 1968. But many former Guildsmen went on to be designers and engineers in the auto industry. And with GM going through hardships now, some former Guildsmen think reigniting the program might be just what the company needs.
"It was a great period in time that served a great purpose," says John Jacobus, former Guildsman and author of The Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild: An Illustrated History. "It was just great ideas."
From about 1930 to 1948, kids designed miniature-scale Napoleonic coaches for the competition. The idea was that if they could think through and make all of the elements of the coach, they would probably be pretty good at designing automobiles. Between 1937 and 1968, the competition also included designing and building model-scale futuristic "dream cars."
The program was shut down between the years of 1938 and 1945, when GM re-tooled its operations to help with the World War II effort. GM provided cash awards to state winners and invited regional winners to Detroit for a multi-day visit, tour and banquet. Winners of the national competition received scholarships to design schools and many were then hired right out of school. GM's overseas division also launched similar programs in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, West Germany and Australia.
GM also hired Jacobus even though he never won the competition. "I had been a Guildsman. That was my resume," he says. He worked at GM for about four years, and then in auto safety for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration until retiring in 2001.
GM was very savvy about how it ran the program, says Jacobus. The company held all of the rights to the designs and kids' stories about participating in the competition. It sent photos and information about winners to hometown newspapers.
During the program's run, the company sent out nearly eight million kits, gave 387 scholarships and produced newsletters, which were essentially technical journals geared to 12-year-olds. Building the car also turned into a family event, says Jacobus.
"In those days, everybody wanted a hand in designing these cars, these sexy-looking cars," he says. "The Guild was a public relations program to fire people up. This was all smart and good stuff."
John M. Melberg was certainly fired up. He built and submitted his first car to the competition in 1961, at the age of 16. He won an award in one of the junior categories, and proceeded to win awards for nearly every car he entered from 1962 to1966. In 1966, he took second place in the national senior division. His design was a three-wheeled jet turbine car that had tandem seating just like a jet cockpit.
"From an early age I had an interest in cars," says Melberg, 63. "Participating in the Guild was about the chance to become a car designer and win a scholarship." The scholarship allowed him to attend the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Like Jordan and Jacobus, GM hired him right out of school. Melberg worked at GM from 1968 to 1972. Then he worked in the design studio of a manufacturer of agricultural and construction vehicles and with a company that makes emergency rescue vehicles. He currently works with Thomas Built Buses in North Carolina.
As GM struggles financially, former Guildsmen say re-starting a competition like the Guild could be a way for the company and the auto industry to tune into a new generation of auto owners.
"I had thoughts of starting the Guild again as a way of tapping into the talent of a younger generation. I tried to no avail," says Jordan. "And we've talked about it since." GM invested a lot into advanced design, says Jordan, and the company always gave its designers freedom of expression. Speaking about the current shake-up in the auto industry, Melberg says, "Ultimately, when the dust settles, the next wave of influence is re-packaging automobiles into something that's different. I certainly think design competitions like the Guild could help."
The challenge to re-launching the competition is that we live in a very different era than the 1930s to 1960s, says Jacobus. The popularity of making three-dimensional models out of balsa wood and other materials has waned. If a competition were to start again, it would probably have to focus on getting youth to make computer aided and/or online car designs. "But anything that gets kids involved in science and engineering is the right idea," says Jacobus.
Eric Billingsley writes for Innovation from his base in Los Angeles.
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