When barriers are broken and diverse thoughts are brought together, we all thrive, grow and innovation occurs. This is exactly what happened when Ford hired transportation designer McKinley Thompson, Jr. A graduate of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, the Queens, New York native with a love of cars and a desire to create something new, exciting, useful and something unlike anything that had been seen before. In an interview documented by The Henry Ford, Thompson, Jr recalled the moment he knew he wanted to be an automotive designer. He said, “It just so happened that the clouds opened up for the sunshine to come through. It lit that car up like a searchlight.” He remembers running toward it, but the light had turned green. He recalls that he “was never so impressed with anything in all my life,” and in that moment, it was fixed for him. He says that “I knew that’s what I wanted to do – I wanted to be an automobile designer.”
He took that love and went to the Army Signal Corps in World War II and gained a firm foundation for the career of his dreams by learning drafting and working as an engineering layout coordinator. In the post-war climate, he used that training to provide for his family and himself, but the hope and dream of becoming an automotive designer lingered and persisted. When he entered a design contest for Motor Trend Magazine with a design for a turbine car with a reinforced plastic body, he won using concepts that were trending in the Post World War II Era. Taking his winnings and an inspired drive, he enrolled in transportation design department of ArtCenter College of Design to graduate in 1956.
He went on to be the first Black designer hired at Ford. His first assignment was at Ford’s advanced design studio in Dearborn, working under George Walker, vice president of Ford design. His talents were put to good use and among his projects was a light-duty cab-forward truck, several concept sketches for the soon-to-be Ford Mustang and the would become legendary Ford GT40. His work on the first generation Ford Bronco lingers until today. The aggressive and muscular body with the widely placed wheels are iconic parts of the Bronco sports-utility vehicle. His concept of an open-air 4×4 featuring a square, short body and high ground clearance with minimal front and rear overhangs for optimum off-road capability. One of his designs, titled “Package Proposal #5 for Bronco,” rendered July 24, 1963, echoes the design language that would become iconic attributes of the first-generation Bronco and other SUVs modeled on its body style. Thompson, Jr. also worked on the space-age Ford Gyron, a two-wheeled concept car that was on display at the Century of Progress exhibit at the Ford Rotunda in 1961.
His dreams were not limited to automotive design, but also extended to inspiring others to rise and grow in places far flung from America. He partnered with Detroit baseball legend Wallace Triplett to work on the side for ten years to build a prototype following the model of Henry Ford’s Model T. They took that idea and pitched to developing automakers in other developing countries. The plan never took off, and in 1979, he abandoned the project, but not before inspiring others and paving the way for more designers, more men of color and more diversity within the automotive design field. In 1984, he retired from Ford after a long distinguished career and passed away in Arizona in 2006.
