Tom Tjaarda was born to design automobiles. His father John Tjaarda developed a concept car for the Ford Motor Company. It was called the “Briggs Dream Car” and it was a streamlined, rear-engined creation based on some of his earlier designs. It was eventually reworked to have the engine up front and became the design basis for the 1936 Lincoln Zephyr.
Tjaarda studied architecture, not automotive design, at the University of Michigan. However, as his senior thesis, he didn’t deliver a design for a building, he delivered a design for an automobile. This won him an internship at Carrozzeria Ghia. So it was off to Turin, Italy, where he began his career and continued to live and work.
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