Donald N. Frey

Donald Nelson Frey (pronounced Frī ) (March 23, 1923 – March 5, 2010), was widely known as the Ford Motor Company product manager who, along with Lee Iacocca and others, developed the Ford Mustang into a viable project — and who ultimately supervised the development of the car in a record 18 months.

At times besieged by autograph seekers for his role with the Mustang, He was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Background Frey was born to Edward Muir Luken and Margaret Bryden (née Nelson) Frey in St. Louis, Missouri. His paternal great-grandfather, Abraham Frey, was born in Leipzig, Germany.

He grew up with his younger brother, Stuart M. (who later became chief engineer at Ford Motor Company after Donald), in Waterloo, Iowa, where his father worked for Deere & Company. His father, a metallurgist, designed the 1923 John Deere Model D tractor, and would later work for the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company. As children, Frey and his brother had once made gunpowder — from scratch.

Frey married four times, to Margaret (mother of his six children), Mary Cameron, Arvelene Gore, and last wife Kay Eberley, from whom he was separated. survived by three daughters, Margaret Walton, Catherine McNair, and Elizabeth Sullivan and two sons, Christopher and Donald Jr. to continue developing the car.

Mike Mueller quoted Frey in his 2009 book Mustang: An American Classic as attributing the inspiration for the Mustang to GM's strategy of incrementally improving the Corvair. "I guess in desperation they put bucket seats in the thing, called it the Monza, and it started to sell".

Also in 1967, Frey was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for the development of gas turbine engines.

Frey is one of the main characters in the movie Ford v Ferrari, in which he plays a role in the development of the Ford GT40.

Later career "Science is trying to explain the world as it is, while engineering is trying to design the world you'd like to have." resigning to become president of General Cable Corporation. Environmental issues became Frey's focus, leading him to establish new copper recycling methods. making "a sweeping transformation of a company still known for film, microfiche and microfilm, as the video era dawned." in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IE/MS) Department.

Frey was elected on December 13, 2004, to serve on the board of directors for Stonewater Control Systems.

Frey Prize As a tribute to his parents (his father was an engineer and his mother was studying engineering when the couple married), he set up the Margaret and Muir Frey Memorial Prize for Innovation and Creativity ("Frey Prize") at the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in 2001. The undergraduate prize "recognizes design creativity in the best senior capstone projects — projects that integrate aspects of the McCormick curriculum and are designed by a student or team of students to address known problems or credible new products or processes".