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Nubians & Lambskin. Today an auto designer, in the words of one, "works best when draped at the edge of a turquoise swimming pool while Nubian slaves in gold sarongs serve chilled nectars in silver cups, and a blonde, streamlined masseuse works on the master's right wrist." The description is only a slight exaggeration. George Walker sits in an office fit for an Eastern potentate: a $50,000 production done in creamy-white and black, with raw silk draperies, sumptuous leather couches, a jungle of tropical plants along one end, a bank of hifi, TV, refrigerator and cabinets at the other. On the floor spreads a carpet of inch-thick black lambskin. Reported cost: $30,000. Says Walker happily: "Ain't it sexy!"
There, in command of an $11.5 million red brick styling center set in an expanse of playing fountains and shimmering pools. Style Boss Walker works at the head of a staff of 650 artists, draftsmen, modelers and engineers. Most are young (average-age: 31); all have what automen call "gasoline in their veins." Says Walker: "You just got to love cars."
Three-Year Stretch. Ford styling is not a simple matter of blue-sky daydreaming. A new model is no longer turned out in a few months. It now takes three years and thousands of sketches. First come the idea sketches, bold and sweeping, of bodies, fenders, headlights, showing the parts from every angle. When all the ideas are agreed on, they are blocked in full scale on an enormous sheet of paper. Then a model three-eighths the full-sized car is made, changed a hundred times. Finally a full-scale clay model is sculptured, complete down to the last chrome molding.
All the while, Walker helps to refine the design, shaving one-eighth of an inch here, changing a curve there. Designers may make as many as 50 sketches of a single steering wheel, spend months deciding where the heater buttons and other appointments of the car must go, more months choosing materials to complement each of 32 different outside paint combinations. The cost of supplies alone comes to $1,600,000 a year. At each step, engineers tell the stylists what they can and cannot do. Ford's designers were unable to have lower hoods until engine experts learned how to cut the height of air filters and intake silencers.
Over all the styling studios hangs a curtain of near-nuclear-plant secrecy. Ford's 15 studios have locks that can be changed in half an hour. A security force of 20 guards run by an ex-FBI agent checks every employee's badge (a different color for each division) to make sure that no one is where he should not be. Outside, the security patrol has a 60-power telescope to keep watch on a nearby grain elevator where rival spotters might lurk. All unused sketches are carefully burned; all experimental clay models smashed. Everywhere, posters exhort the stylists to keep mum about their work. Samples: "No matter where, talk with care"—"Don't foretell the future."