Business news. Mr.Richard Caleal, 94, Helped Design Innovative ’49 Ford, Dies

Richard D. Caleal, a self-taught automotive designer who, working at his kitchen table, helped create the 1949 Ford — the compact, streamlined and hugely popular car credited with lifting the company out of its postwar financial slump — died last Saturday in West Bloomfield, Mich. He was 94 and lived in Farmington Hills, Mich.

Ford Motor

The big success of the 1949 model lifted Ford from a postwar slump.

Small Business

Packard and Studebaker.

After leaving Studebaker, Mr. Caleal freelanced for the industrial designer George Walker, who had been awarded the contract to design Ford's 1949 model. With several of his former Studebaker colleagues, Mr. Caleal worked on the design in the kitchen of his bungalow in Mishawaka, Ind. He made a quarter-scale model out of clay, baking it in his home oven.

 

 

 

Mr. Caleal, who joined Ford after the success of his model, later worked for Chrysler.

Besides his daughter, of Birmingham, Mich.; he is survived by his wife, the former Margaret Adelaide Arata; two sons, Richard Jr., of Cartagena, Colombia; and Daniel, of West Bloomfield; four grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.

Source: www.1stwebnews.com