Eugene Bordinat Jr. (February 10, 1920 – August 11, 1987) was a

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

styling executive whose career spanned several decades.

Early career

Bordinat was educated at the

Cranbrook Academy of Art The Cranbrook Educational Community is an education, research, and public museum complex in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This National Historic Landmark was founded in the early 20th century by newspaper mogul George Gough Booth. It consists of C ...

and the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. He joined General Motors in 1939 as a trainee. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

he was a supervisor at Fisher Body for

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production, and later served in the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

. 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 Mercury is a defunct division of the American automobile manufacturer Ford Motor Company. Created in 1938 by Edsel Ford, Mercury served as the medium-price brand of Ford for nearly its entire existence, bridging the price gap between the Ford ...

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. 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 and Lincoln Continental Mk III, as well as the

Pinto Pinto is a Portuguese language, Portuguese, Spanish language, Spanish, Sephardi Jews, Jewish (Sephardic), and Italian language, Italian surname. It is a high-frequency surname in all List of countries and territories where Portuguese is an officia ...

. Bordinat was an enthusiast of the wire-wheels-and-stand-up-grilles school of design, as reflected in the Mark III and a number of other cars he styled. He retired from Ford in 1980 following his 60th birthday.

Personal life

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

Industrial Designers Society of America The Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) is a membership-based not-for-profit organization that promotes the practice and education of industrial design. The organization was formally established in 1965 by the collaborative merger of ...

from its founding in 1965. In his retirement he wrote a light-hearted autobiography 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 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 (HFH) is an 877-bed tertiary care hospital, education and research complex at the western edge of the New Center area in Detroit, Michigan. The flagship facility for the Henry Ford Health System, it was one of the first hos ...

on August 11, 1987. Although his

widow A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died. Terminology The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...

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

References

*
Archived New York Times obituary
retrieved July 24, 2008
IDSA page on Eugene Bordinat
retrieved July 24, 2008 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bordinat, Eugene 1920 births 1987 deaths Ford executives Cranbrook Academy of Art alumni University of Michigan alumni People in the automobile industry United States Army Air Forces soldiers United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II