Henry Lauve graduated from the University of Paris and worked as a fashion designer and designing custom car bodies in Paris before moving to the U.S. to work in advertising illustration. In 1939, he began working at General Motors on interiors for all five divisions. In the mid-1940s he was named head of the Buick studio, and in the early 1950s he was made Staff Assistant in charge of Automotive Design. In 1956, he left GM to start his own design studio, Designs for Tomorrow, working mainly in industrial design. In the 1960s, he became a design consultant for Citroen, designing their GS, CX, and SM vehicles. At the time of the interview, Lauve was a partner and chief designer at the Electric Auto Corporation. In his oral history, Lauve describes his early work in Paris, designing bodies for Labourette and Chapron. He discusses his time at GM, particularly how his background in fashion design helped him in his work in interiors. He talks about his time in interiors, pushing for more options in the low-price vehicles, and a bigger variety of fabric options across all the lines. Lauve discusses his work with Motorama vehicles, particularly the Coupe de Mar, Centurion, and LeSabre. He goes on to talk about his time as head of the Buick studio and his input in the naming of several cars including the Riveria, Coupe deVille, and Corvette. He says that while he enjoyed his time at GM, the constant grind of putting out facelifts began to wear on him, and in 1956 left to establish his own studio, Design for Tomorrow. At his design firm, he worked on a number of industrial design and architecture projects before starting a consultancy with Citroen in the 1960s. Lauve describes his work with Citroen as a very interesting and positive experience, having almost complete control over the design process. He goes into detail about his designs, particularly the SM which was named Car of the Year. He wraps up his oral history detailing his electric car venture, Electric Auto Company. He discusses the startup, funding, and development of the vehicle and the market, and the importance of electric vehicles.

Collection contains 2 cassettes, 2 WAV files, 4 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 1 loose transcript, 1 bound transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 26, 2021 and November 26 2025.