B.C. senior recalls becoming trailblazing car designer

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Mimi's Car Adam finds out how a Victoria woman's enduring passion for cars led to a trailblazing career.

VICTORIA, B.C. — To appreciate why Mimi Vandermolen is so pleased to notice one particular vehicle she’s walking past, you need to know that seeing this many cars in one place would have been unimaginable when she was growing-up in the post-war Netherlands.

“I think that only increased my interest (in cars) because there were so few,” says Mimi, adding she mostly saw people travelling on bicycles.

Young Mimi relished receiving Dinky Cars for her birthday, before spending her allowance on car magazines, including Motor Trend.

“Definitely design was my first love,” says Mimi, who was interested in how cars looked both inside and out.

After her family moved to Canada, Mimi studied Industrial Design in college —where she was the only woman in a class of 28 men.

After she graduated, she became one of the first female automotive designers at Ford.

“The first thing one of the (male) designers said, ‘OK, you’re the woman – go get the coffee and donuts,’” Mimi recalls with a laugh. “I looked at him and I said, ‘No.’”

Mimi says she encountered two camps of men: guys who resented her, and dads who appreciated the potential of her.

“They thought this was so neat,” Mimi recalls with a smile. “Maybe their girls could do something like this.”

And what Mimi ended up doing was working harder than her colleagues, and earning the respect of her team, before rising up the ranks to design a car that was a “$4 billion bet” for the company.

“A lot of people were very nervous,” Mimi recalls.

Critics wanted the new car to be more conventionally square, and look less like “a jellybean,”

But Mimi and her team fought to keep their softer look, and the execs ended up agreeing.

“It was exciting to be there,” Mimi smiles.

But nothing could compare to the feeling of seeing her Ford Taurus become a best-seller and a design trend-setter, named “Car of the Year” by Motor Trend, the magazine Mimi used to read as a girl.

“When you can stand there and watch a (manufacturing) plant spitting out hundreds of thousands of your car, that’s pretty darn exciting,” Mimi smiles.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this story, when Mimi walked past a Taurus.

“I worked on that,” Mimi smiles, pointing at the car. “I was part of that team!”

While she’s still pleased to see her product on the road, Mimi will always be grateful for the car-loving girl she once was, who had the perseverance and talent to become a global trailblazer.

“Don’t just accept the normal stuff people throw at you,” Mimi says when asked what she would tell her younger self. “If it’s really what you love, keep going and doing what you’re doing.”