Rhys Miller started his design career with short tenures at Briggs in 1934 and General Motors in 1935 before moving to Chrysler in 1935 where he worked on front ends and detail work. In 1945, he joined Lockheed Aircraft Corp. heading their design department. In 1950, he moved into consultant work for Nash and then opened a design firm with Buzz Grisinger in 1953 doing contract work for Kaiser Frazer and a proposal the Continental MkII. He moved to Ford Motor Company in 1954, managing the Thunderbird studio then as executive designer for the Ford Advanced studio. In 1956, he moved into industrial design working with Frank Hershey on his Kaiser Frazer contract. In 1963, he started his own industrial design office. He retired in 1975 but continued in part time contract work. Miller begins his oral history describing his interest in cars as a youth, and the difficulties he had getting a job as a designer. He describes his early career at Briggs learning design, and then his time at GM doing detail work in the Pontiac and Chevrolet studios. He speaks of his time at Chrysler as an exciting time and describes his fellow designers as well as some of the projects he worked on such as the 1937 Chrysler front end, 1938 Desoto front end, and 1940 and 1941 Dodge front ends. He shares he was dissatisfied with Chrysler after returning from WWII and decided to move out to Lockheed where he stayed for five years. He discusses his work with Bill Flajole consulting with Nash and working on the Metropolitan in particular. He describes his and Grisinger’s contract with Ford for the Continental MkII and the competition process. He goes on to talk about his time at Ford, and the hectic pace which caused him to leave again for Chrysler where he talks about the small car project and Virgil Exner. He goes on to talk about the myriad of projects he worked on after leaving automotive design, ranging from electronics, to mobile homes, to desk accessories. He talks about his work with Kaiser Frazer and then his time working on custom interior modifications for World Airways. He wraps up with a brief description of his design philosophy and the importance of design.

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