Eugene T. "Bob" Gregorie:
Father of the ContinentalBob Gregorie's youth was spent on the East Coast of the United States, primarily on Long Island. This marine atmosphere inculcated in him a lifelong love of ships--steam yachts and sailing vessels.
As a young man, he spent his professional apprenticeship in the great ship design firms of New York City. Much of his later success he attributes to this exacting discipline.
With the shock waves generated by the 1929 stock market collapse and the ensuing Great Depression, Bob Gregorie was faced with the reality that yacht commissions were be, coming few and far between. Characteristically, he turned to automotive design where he hoped to apply the design fundamentals he had acquired in ship design.
After discouraging stints with the fast fading custom body firms, in 1932 he arrived in Dearborn where he had been referred to the Ford Motor Company. Edsel B. Ford, who had been the avatar of tasteful design at the Ford Motor Company since the early 1920's, had, with the success of the 1932 Ford V-8, established a small professional design center at the Dearborn complex. Heretofore dependent on local body firms, Ford decided to develop special bodies at his personal direction. To head up the operation, he hired young Bob Gregorie. They hit it off almost from the beginning. Edsel was delighted with Greaorie's marine design background and his quiet air of confident authority.
Gregorie was largely responsible for the practical but modern lines of the Ford from 1935 to 1948. Several of of these models are highly regarded by today's collectors.
Edsel Ford's vision of modern design which had early taken shape with the stylish, custom-bodied Lincoln began to flower in 1936 with the emergence of the boldly streamlined Lincoln Zephyr which, two years later, provided Ford and Gregorie with the base of one of the most admired designs of the 20th century: the Lincoln Continental. Artfully blending the radical shape of the Lincoln Zephyr with Edsel Ford's vision of a "continental" automobile, Gregorie and his talented design staff produced the sweeping, soaring lines of what was to become the 1940 Lincoln Continental.
Introduced in the fall of 1939, the Continental was a critical success largely due to its classic, yet modern body contours. Its acceptance by design aficionados and a select consumer audience was universal. In 1951, it was selected by the Museum of Modern Art as one of the eight best pre-war automotive designs.
Gregorie with characteristic modesty, attributes the design of the Continental to Edsel Ford's inherent good taste and critical eye. "He was," says Gregorie, "a generous and perceptive mentor who closely followed the development of his dream car." But much of the credit for the Lincoln Continental's design must go to Bob Gregorie whose masterly implementation of his mentor's suggestions produced an enduring triumph of modern automotive design.
We salute then, Bob Gregorie as the recipient of the Designer Lifetime Achievement Award for the 1990 Eyes on the Classics. Gregorie retired in 1947, and currently resides in St. Augustine, Florida, with his wife, Evelyn.
