Joe Oros

[6] He lived in Santa Barbara, California[4] with his wife Betty Thatcher Oros, the first female automotive designer,[2][7] until her death in 2001.

[citation needed] Oros graduated at the top of his class[8] from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1939 — having studied under Viktor Schreckengost[9] — and later became a student at General Motors' School of Automotive Design, where he worked under Harley Earl's guidance[citation needed], including a period of time with Cadillac.

After serving in World War II, Oros went to work for Walker's industrial design firm.

Oros received a Medallion Award from the Industrial Designers Institute (IDI) (now the Industrial Designers Society of America) along with George W. Walker, Eugene Bordinat, Herbert Tod, Rulo N. Conrad, John Najjar, and Elwood P. Engel, for the 1956 Lincoln Premier hard-top[11] — as well as an IDI Bronze Medal in 1964[11] along with Eugene Bordinat, L. David Ash, G. L. Halderman, Charles H. Phaneuf, D.C. Woods, J. Najjar, and J.B. Foster for their contributions to the Mustang.

Although delays caused the revised Thunderbird to arrive in dealerships three months late, it was a huge sales success.

As Lee Iacocca's assistant general manager and chief engineer, Donald N. Frey, was the head engineer for the Mustang project — supervising the development of the Mustang in a record 18 months[12][13] — while Iacocca championed the project as Ford Division general manager.

We talked about the sporty car for most of that afternoon, setting parameters for what it should look like — and what it should not look like — by making lists on a large pad, a technique I adapted from the management seminar.

We also had photographs of all the previous sporty cars that had been done in the Corporate Advanced studio as a guide to themes or ideas that were tired or not acceptable to management.

We couldn't afford the manpower, but we made up for lost time by working around the clock so our model would be ready for the management review.

Henry II was totally sold on the Oros team design, and Iacocca was just happy he was finally going to have a car.

Henry Ford II walked over later and told Oros, "Joe, you know we’ve approved your car but you’re $15 over the hill on it."

After all of these years, Mustang has never lost its luster.Upon his retirement in 1975, Joe Oros and his wife, Betty Oros, moved to Santa Barbara, California, became very active in the Romanian-American community in Southern California, serving for a few years (1988–1991) as the chairman of the New Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church and Cultural center in Los Angeles.