From an early age, Theodore W. Pietsch showed a strong fascination for cars, reflecting a wide family interest in automobiles and the automotive industry.

[1] In late 1934, Pietsch left Baltimore for Detroit where he began his career under Ken Lee as a junior draftsman for the Chrysler Corporation, serving initially as an apprentice but eventually working up to duties equivalent to those of a "senior designer."

At Hudson Motor he was also assigned to war work that consisted of making accurate perspective drawings of airplane assemblies and subassemblies from blueprints, and air-brush retouching of photographs (that were later used in an instruction manual prepared for the armed services) of mechanical parts of an anti-aircraft gun.

In 1944, a record workforce of some 31,000 men and women built a wide variety of items, including aircraft gun turrets, wings, stabilizers, ailerons, tank hulls, bomb and wheel doors for the B-29, to mention only a few.

[10] But by September 1944, when Pietsch signed on, they were already looking ahead to post-war car designs, and efforts were underway to secure contracts for automotive bodies from Packard and Chrysler, among other companies.

As he had done at Hudson and Briggs in previous years, Pietsch made an appointment to discuss job possibilities at yet another firm, this time the Ford Motor Car Company.

Pietsch played a decisive role in this domestic success as well as in Chrysler's association with Italian auto makers—first, a short-lived relationship with Pinin Farina in 1950, and then, in the following year, with Carrozzeria Ghia of Turin.

Under these ideal working conditions, it's a wonder that Pietsch didn't stay longer with Exner—the potential at Chrysler for new and exciting things was enormous, but once again the thrill of a new challenge was too great.

By the late 1930s and early 40s, he had sold designs for Greyhound buses, Pensy railcars and locomotives, TWA sleeper planes, Matson ships and large ocean liners, Pepsodent toothpaste tubes, Schick electric shavers, buildings of all kinds, including supermarkets, and hundreds of other products, not the least of which were Studebakers.

Studebaker had been on the decline since its peak income year in 1949—the failure to understand market conditions, and an inability to appreciate public interest in the better-selling models, which resulted in severe underproduction—were mistakes of managers who seemed to be unable to respond to disappointing sales other than blame Loewy's advanced styling studio.

[18] Things were so bad by late 1953 that discussion turned to the idea of teaming up with another car company, and by the following June, with sales for 1954 worse than ever, a merger with Packard was approved.

[19] The new Studebaker-Packard management decided to sever the expensive relationship with Loewy and Associates, thinking that their own in-house styling team should be given full control of Studebaker design efforts.

After several months looking for work in the South Bend area, he went to Chicago, where he was soon offered a position by the industrial design firm of Dave Chapman, Incorporated.

In June 1962, however, frustrated and angry over management's abrupt decision to cancel a project that he had worked for many months—the design for an all-new version of the Studebaker Lark for 1962—Pietsch lost his temper and was fired.

Soon this narrowed down to nothing but "ornamentation," in which he was obliged to spend all his time designing nameplates, lettering, and the configuration of numerals on speedometers, tachometers, and other instruments, all extremely tedious work.