Eugene Bordinat, Jr. was a Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

 styling executive whose career spanned several decades.

Early career

Bordinat was educated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art

Cranbrook Educational Community

The Cranbrook Educational Community, a National Historic Landmark, in the US state of Michigan was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. Cranbrook campus is in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills consisting of Cranbrook Schools, Cranbrook Academy of Art,...

 and University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. He joined General Motors

General Motors

General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...

 in 1939 as a trainee. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he was a supervisor at Fisher Body

Fisher Body

Fisher Body is an automobile coachbuilder founded by the Fisher brothers in 1908 in Detroit, Michigan; it is now an operating division of General Motors Company...

 for tank

Tank

A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

 production, and later served in the United States Army Air Forces

United States Army Air Forces

The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....

. Bordinat briefly returned to work at GM as a senior stylist after the war.

Ford career

Bordinat joined Ford in 1947, quitting General Motors. He supervised styling at the Lincoln-Mercury

Lincoln-Mercury

Lincoln–Mercury was a collective name for the Lincoln and Mercury divisions of the Ford Motor Company, whose vehicles were typically sold side-by-side in a single dealership....

 division, influencing the implementation of many automotive designs. Bordinat was promoted to vice president for styling and a chief designer in 1961, the successor to George W. Walker

George W. Walker

George W. Walker was an industrial and automotive designer. His most notable work was the original Ford Thunderbird....

. He ultimately served 19 years, longer than anyone in Ford Styling before or since. His favorite designs during his tenure included successful cars like the Ford Mustang

Ford Mustang

The Ford Mustang is an automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. It was initially based on the second generation North American Ford Falcon, a compact car. Introduced early on April 17, 1964, as a "1964½" model, the 1965 Mustang was the automaker's most successful launch since the Model A...

 and Lincoln Continental Mk III, as well as the Pinto

Ford Pinto

The Ford Pinto is a subcompact car produced by the Ford Motor Company for the model years 1971–1980. The car's name derives from the Pinto horse. Initially offered as a two-door sedan, Ford offered "Runabout" hatchback and wagon models the following year, competing in the U.S. market with the AMC...

.

Personal life

Bordinat is quoted to have said "Beauty is a good 10-day sales report", a methodology that made him versatile and adaptive. He was a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America

Industrial Designers Society of America

Industrial Designers Society of America is an organization of professional industrial designers primarily in the United States. Recently IDSA has started chapters in Canada and in China...

 from its founding in 1965. In his retirement he wrote a light-hearted autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 manuscript entitled My Days at the Court of Henry II. Though it had been finished and accepted, it was being edited at the time of his death to accommodate a more "anti-Iacocca

Lee Iacocca

Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca is an American businessman known for engineering the Mustang, the unsuccessful Ford Pinto, being fired from Ford Motor Company, and his revival of the Chrysler Corporation in the 1980s...

 slant" as suggested by the publisher and of which Bordinat approved. Eugene Bordinat died suddenly of an undiagnosed lung ailment at the Henry Ford Hospital

Henry Ford Hospital

Henry Ford Hospital, the flagship facility for , is an 805-bed tertiary care hospital, education and research complex located in Detroit ....

 on August 11, 1987. Though his widow

Widow

A widow is a woman whose spouse has died, while a widower is a man whose spouse has died. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or occasionally viduity. The adjective form is widowed...

Teresa said that she would finish it, the work was never published.