Inside that issue of Motor Trend was a contest giving five winners a full-ride four-year scholarship to the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles. At the time, it was one of the most prestigious and well-respected industrial design schools in the country. The contest required people to write an essay about what they thought automotive design trends would be over the next ten years and provide drawings, photos, or models of cars to support their ideas. Thompson’s love of cars and the future paid off, and his submission garnered him one of those scholarships.
Thompson graduated from the Art Center School of Design with a degree in transportation design in 1956 and was soon after hired by Ford. At the advanced design studio in Dearborn, Michigan, he worked on a light-duty cab-forward truck and drew several concept sketches for the yet-to-be-released Ford Mustang, the renowned GT40, and the Thunderbird. According to The Henry Ford, he even worked on some wildly futuristic designs, like the Gyron, a two-wheeled concept gyrocar introduced at the Century of Progress exhibit at the Ford Rotunda in 1961, an actual flying car, and a nuclear-powered multi-trailered semi-truck.
But what Thompson is most famous for is his contributions to the legendary Ford Bronco. In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Ted Ryan — Ford’s archivist and heritage brand manager — said Thompson wasn’t the actual designer of the Bronco, “but he worked on the very first sketches.” In one design Thompson drew in July of 1963 called “Package Proposal #5 for Bronco,” the recognizable attributes of the first-generation Bronco can clearly be seen.
McKinley Thompson, Jr.’s impact on the car industry is legendary indeed.
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