During the long tenures of Harley Earl, the G.M. design chief credited with inventing the auto design profession, and his successor, William Mitchell, designers were too terrified to remove drawings from the studios.
Other significant factors include traveler's pro-auto and pro-carpooling attitudes, marital status (single), current travel mode (private car), profession (employees) and trip purpose (shopping) of carpooling.
States including Michigan and New York offer special job retraining programs for those who worked in especially hard-hit professions, like auto manufacturing.
Auto design is a global profession, where apprentice designers emerge from notable schools — the Royal College of Art in London, Pforzheim University in Germany, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena or the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
The ages of respondents ranged from 17 to 66, and their professions ran the gamut: auto mechanics, homemakers (their word, not mine), financial analysts, investment bankers, retired schoolteachers, carpenter, community activist.
In these desultory days of auto-tune, when singer and pole dancer -- two professions with formerly diametrically opposed skill-sets -- are now, sadly, interchangeable, Donna Summer's protean abilities seem even more impressive.
He cited John Madden, who went into broadcasting, and Joe Gibbs, who went into auto racing, as "two gentlemen who had success in two professions".
