Joe Oros graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art in Industrial Design and was hired into General Motor’s design school in 1939, eventually working in the Cadillac studio under Bill Mitchell. In 1945, he joined George Walker’s firm working on multiple accounts including Nash-Kelvinator, Ferguson Tractor, and in 1949 was placed on the team to design a concept for the 1949 Ford. Oros was part of the consultant team under Walker at Ford until 1955, when he was officially hired as chief stylist of the Ford studio. In 1968, he was sent to Ford of Europe as director of European design, and in 1974 he returned to the US as executive director of product design for Lincoln-Mercury, and Ford Division cars and trucks, a position he retired from in 1975. In his oral history, Oros discusses his early career at GM, working in the Industrial Design, Special Development, and then Cadillac studios. He talks about the design procedures at GM, as well as working under Bill Mitchell and Harley Earl. He moves on to discuss being laid off during WWII and moving to the GM engineering department to do war work, and near the end of the work doing contract work for Sundberg-Ferar. In 1945, Oros joined George Walker’s firm and discusses how the organization operated and the variety of accounts he worked on. He goes into detail on the firm’s participation in developing a design concept for the 1949 Ford, which was eventually accepted by the company. He talks about the six years he worked through Walker as a consultant for Ford, working on a variety of projects including the 1952 Ford, the Thunderbird, and the hardtop effect, but also discussed the difficult environment working as a consultant alongside regular Ford staff. In 1955, Oros was hired at Ford as staff stylists for Walker as vice president and director of styling and was soon named chief stylist of the Ford studio. He discusses the structure he put in place in the studio, and how he worked with his executives, managers, and designers to put together ideas and models. He talks about the work his group did on the 1961 Thunderbird design, the Falcon, and the Mustang, as well as truck design. From 1968-1973 Oros was named director of European design working in multiple countries building out the design structure, specifically adding a new design studio in Torino. He discusses returning to the US as executive director of product design for the Ford Division and his work there until retiring in 1975. He concludes his oral history discussing his design philosophy.

Betty Thatcher Oros graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art and was hired at Hudson Motor Car Company where she worked until 1941 when she stepped away from automotive design after marrying Joe Oros. In her brief seven-page oral history, Oros describes how Frank Sprig contacted her directly to work at Hudson as he was specifically seeking a woman designer. She said there was more of an emphasis on female customers and therefore they wanted a woman’s perspective on the team. She describes working on both color and fabric as well as exterior decoration and was heavily involved in designing the 1941 Hudson instrument panel. Betty Oros left automotive design in 1941 as it was problematic for a husband and wife to work at competing automotive manufacturers at the time.

Collection contains 6 cassettes, 6 WAV files, 6 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 27, 2021 and June 15, 2026.