Halderman spent his entire 40-year career in design at Ford Motor Company. Joining the company in 1954 as a Lincoln-Mercury studio designer, he soon moved to the Ford studio where he worked on a variety of production cars, as well as the Mystere show car. Halderman was chosen as design executive for the new Mustang and oversaw the project. In the late 1960s into the early 1970s, he headed the Truck studio before being moved to head the Lincoln-Mercury Studio in the mid-1970s. After this, Halderman headed the Ford Studio, Advanced Studio, and Advance International Design where he worked on various pre-production designs, including the Thunderbird. In 1978, he moved to head of Intermediate and Compact Exterior design working on Ford’s overall downsizing goals. At the time of the interview, he was director of Small Car Exteriors and Truck Design. Halderman retired in 1994. In his oral history, Halderman discusses his early time in the design department when they worked on major design updates each year and the difficulty of keeping up with management’s demand for a wide variety of proposals. He discusses being hired by Gene Bordinat, and working under him, and describes how he ran the design department. Much of Halderman’s oral history is spent discussing the development and executing of the Mustang. He discusses the origins, product planning and working with Hal Sperlich, as well as designers Joe Oros, David Ash, and Charlie Phaneuf. Halderman talks about the project as an uphill battle, as management was wary of the project, and his work to protect and present the car as a relatively low priced “whole package” without add-on luxuries. He goes on to discuss design department changes from George Walker’s management, to Bordinat, and after Bordinat left. He talks about the challenges of designing in the 1970s and 1980s with greater government control and how stressful vehicle downsizing was at the company. He ends his oral history talking about current and future design trends, and includes short snapshots of various designers he worked with over the years.

Collection contains 1 .25" tape, 2 WAV files, 2 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, and 1 Word transcript. Uploaded July 26, 2021.