Strother MacMinn; Auto Designer, Writer, Teacher

Strother MacMinn, influential automotive designer, writer and teacher at the prestigious Art Center College of Design for 50 years, has died. He was 79.

MacMinn, who designed cars for General Motors and Opel, died at his Pasadena home Monday, college officials said Friday.

He helped make auto design a cameo industry in the Los Angeles area with his teaching and in helping to establish Toyota’s Calty Design Research Inc., the first automotive design satellite in Southern California.

“This was the man who defined and articulated the art and responsibility of automotive design for most of us whose life he touched,” said Ron Hill, chairman of the Art Center’s transportation department.

MacMinn taught and mentored a remarkable number of the major automotive designers working today for Detroit’s Big Three and companies in Japan and Europe. “Teaching is a relationship that opens doors for students,” he once said.

Art Center, where he had taught since 1948, is known as the nation’s No. 1 school for auto design. MacMinn maintained close ties to auto manufacturers, helping to secure financial and technical support.

A historian of automotive design, MacMinn wrote prolifically for such publications as Road & Track, Motor Trend, Automobile Quarterly and Sports Car International. He was an expert on the defunct Murphy Body Co., a Pasadena-based designer of custom car bodies in the 1920s and 1930s, and had been writing a book about it.

The widely respected MacMinn was chief honorary judge for several years at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

Memorial donations may be sent to the Strother MacMinn Endowed Scholarship Fund at Art Center, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena, CA 91103.