Fred Mayhew started his design career attending Carnegie Mellon for industrial design and General Motor’s summer school design program. In 1963, he joined Ford Motor Company, moving to different studios and working a short stint in Ford U.K. In 1967, he became a design manager and cycled through a series of exterior studios. Mayhew worked as a design manager on the 1979 Fox platform Mustang, 1981 Escort, EXP, and Tempo Topaz. In 1981, was named design executive for the Pre-Production studio and worked on the Taurus. At the time of the oral history, he was design executive for luxury car exteriors. Mayhew starts his oral history with his time at Carnegie Mellon and describing the GM design summer school program. He goes on to discuss his early career at Ford, moving around every six months for experience, and even spending some time in the Corporate Identity Office working on graphic design and branding. He goes into detail on his work on the 1979 Mustang, which he describes as a career highlight. This work involved working under Jack Telnack, the first focus on aerodynamics, and he discusses the importance of aerodynamics at the time. He describes his work on the Escort, EXP, and Tempo/Topaz program. He then goes on to discuss in detail his work on the Taurus program as a design executive, working on the interior and exterior and the latitude given designers by Don Petersen to create a dramatically different vehicle. He wraps up discussing the different design and managerial stylists of Gene Bordinat, Jack Telnack, and Don Kopka. He also talks about changes to design philosophy at Ford from stylist to designers working with engineering to incorporate aerodynamics, safety features, etc.

Collection contains 1 .25" tape, 2 cassettes, 2 WAV files, 2 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 2 loose transcripts, 1 bound transcript, and 1 PDF transcript. Uploaded July 26, 2021 and November 26, 2025.