Brooks Stevens

Stricken with polio as a child, he was encouraged by his father to practice drawing while confined to his bed, perhaps motivating his career in design.

In 1959, Stevens opened a 12,500sf automotive museum in Mequon, Wisconsin, which became a repository for his own designs as well as others—and became a production facility in the late 1980s for the Wienermobile fleet.

[1] Stevens is credited with styling the late 1940s Modern Hygiene cannister vacuum cleaners,[4] and designed Harley-Davidson motorcycles including the 1949 Hydra-Glide Harley,[citation needed] one of his first, helping create the new suspension forks in the front, bucket headlight, and the streamlined design.

[1] As an automobile designer round about 1954 Stevens shaped the Die Valkyrie based on the Cadillac Eldorado of the same year.

Stevens updated the design of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, an American pop-culture icon, using modern fiberglass methods to "put the wiener in the bun"[4] in 1958.

He also designed the university logo for the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) in 1978 as a part of "The Diamond Jubilee" celebration.

[9] Stevens designed the post-war Skytop Lounge observation cars for the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad's Hiawatha passenger trains.

Stevens continued development of the Excalibur and would introduce the car at the New York Auto show in April 1964.

Together with Bob Hammond's 1956 Lone Star Meteor, these designs may be credited with introducing post-world war automotive styling to leisure craft.