In 1936, Mr. Najjar enrolled in Ford Motor Company's Apprentice School located in Dearborn, Michigan. One day, as Mr. Najjar was working a long shift, Mr. Henry Ford approached him during a plant tour and asked him if he enjoyed his line of work. Mr. Najjar didn’t hesitate to respond and stated that he would rather be drawing cars. After his response, Mr. Henry Ford asked to see his portfolio the following day for a possible job change. The next day, Mr. Henry Ford viewed Mr. Najjar’s portfolio and quickly became impressed with his work. Mr. Ford decided that Mr. Najjar’s talent was needed as part of the engineering team at Ford Motor Company.
Later on, Mr. Najjar was informed that Ford Motor Company was looking to hire talented designers to draw cars in their design department. Mr. Najjar applied for the job position and had his first interview with Mr. Bob Gregorie, former design head under Edsel Ford during 1930-40s. During this time, the design department was located in the Engineering Laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan.
Shortly after becoming a new Ford design employee, Mr. Najjar started his design work on instrument panel knobs by working on end-of-year 1937 models. His design work on the instrument panels was implemented on the 1939 Mercury and the 1941 Ford models and became a trend among American consumers.
Mr. Najjar's career continued to expand within Ford’s design community. Mr. Najjar contributed designs and sketches for the 1939 Lincoln Zephyr. The 1939-41 Lincoln models are often considered the best styling automobiles released by the Ford Motor Company Design Studio. During the 1950's, Mr. Najjar was involved in the design work that allowed Ford to compete with GM's Motorama concept vehicles. For an example, the 1953 Ford XL-500 interior was designed by Mr. Najjar along with many other Lincoln models.
In 1958, Mr. Najjar became the executive in charge of the Stiletto Studio which was under direction of Mr. Elwood P. Engel, Colin Neale, John Orf, and Bob Thomas. This creative group was responsible for the popular 1961 Lincoln Continental design. Throughout the 1960's, Mr. Najjar continued to introduce many more exciting automobile designs for the consumer market.
In 1962, Mr. Gene Bordinat replaced Mr. George Walker as Ford's Vice President of Design. Mr. Bordinat gave directive that each studio had to create a small and sporty car design. Mr. Bordinat brought Mr. Lee Iacocca around to all the studios to see the proposals for their new sporty car design. At the time, Mr. Iacocca did not like the design work; however, it was race car driver, Mr. Dan Gurney, who was visiting the Ford Studio that pointed out the original Mustang-I concept sketch from Najjar’s group by stating, “Now, there’s a nice little car!” Shortly thereafter, the Mustang-I emerged.
In 1962, the two-seat Ford Mustang only shared its name with the production car. Two running prototypes were built and this started Mustang's tremendous success. The Mustang-I prototype model was one of the most famous car designs throughout Najjar’s career at Ford Motor Company. Not only was Mr. Najjar directly involved with the Mustang design, he was also credited with coming up with the horsey name and contributing to the running horse logo used for production of the Mustang. In 1979, Mr. Najjar retired from Ford Motor Company. Sadly, on January 6, 2011, Mr. Najjar passed away. Although he is no longer with us, his great contributions to the Ford Mustang and other automotive design work will always have a special place in automotive history.
A special thanks to Robert Tate, Automotive Historian and Researcher, for donating the story to the MotorCities Story of the Week program. Photographs are courtesy of Ford Motor Company Archive. (Bibliography: Lamm Michael/Holls Dave. A Century of Automotive Style 100 Years Of American Car Design. Lamm-Morada Publishing Co. Inc 1996. Bakken A Douglas / Crippen R David. Automotive Design Oral History Project/The Reminiscences Of John Najjar.1981-1984. Benson Ford Research Center. The Henry Ford.)
Please do not republish the story and/or photographs without permission of MotorCities National Heritage Area. For further information contact Robert Tate at btate@motorcities.org. If you have a story that you would like to donate to be featured as a MotorCities Story of the Week, email Lisa Ambriez at lambriez@motorcities.org.