Bio:Mimi Vandermolen

Mimi Vandermolen (born in 1946 ) is a Canadian car designer She was the first woman to become a chief automotive designer  .

Life

She was born in 1946 in the Netherlands . In 1951, she emigrated with her family to Toronto , where she grew up. In 1965 to 1969 she studied industrial design, at the Ontario College of Art and Design as the first woman to study this field

Her first design job was at Philco, then owned by Ford . She then moved to automotive at Ford. As an intern, she worked on the body and interior of the Ford Mustang II. Then, together with the rest of the team, she worked on the design of the exterior and interior of the Ford Granada . In 1974, she was laid off due to the oil crisis , and temporarily moved to the Autodynamics corporation. Two years later, she returned to the Ford team and began working on the interior designs of the company's flagship models, such as the Mercury Grand Marquis and the Ford Crown Victoria

In 1979, she was promoted to design specialist. Around the same time, she joined the design team for the Ford Taurus . Thanks to it, this model was characterized by an exceptionally functional and practical interior, adapted to the needs of female customers, as well as very comfortable armchairs

Thanks to the tremendous market success of the Ford Taurus, Mimi Vandermolen was promoted to lead exterior and interior designer of Ford compact vehicles in North America. Her first self-made exterior and interior design was in the second generation of the Ford Probe , created in cooperation with Mazda . She spent a year in Japan working on this model. As in the case of the Taurus model, the car was characterized by an exceptionally functional interior.

It was important for Mimi to modernize car interiors to make them as comfortable as possible for women and, as a result, also for men. She said: If I can solve all the problems related to the operation of the vehicle by a woman, it will make it much easier for a man to use it