The InEVitable Podcast Episode 31: Design Legend and Meyers Manx CEO Freeman Thomas
We get into it without perhaps our most fascinating guest to date.
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Like children, it's difficult to pick a favorite podcast guest. But I'll just come right out and say it—I could talk cars with Freeman Thomas for a week straight. Let me put it to you like this, we spoke to Thomas, now the CEO of the revitalized Meyers Manx, for around two hours and we didn't even get to the parts of his career where he was vice president of design at DaimlerChrysler nor when he was director of design for Ford, North America. To say someone has done it all is typically hyperbole. In Freeman's case, it's just scratching the surface.
Should you choose to listen to this week's episode, you'll hear about Freeman's Southern California upbringing and the roundabout way he got into the prestigious Transportation Design department at the ArtCenter College of Design. You'll also hear about his first job working on the Porsche 959 (straight out of college!) and his historic move to the Volkswagen Group, where along with J Mays he created the concept car that would become the new Volkswagen Beetle. From there, Freeman went on to design the Audi TT, a car that went from sketch to concept to production in relative secret.
We do skip ahead to what Freeman and the upstart Meyers Manx are up to with its new electric Manx. Yes, Ed Loh and I have secured the first drive, the second drive, and everything else. There's also a whole lot of inside baseball car industry talk as Freeman has worked with essentially everyone. I'll also say it here and now, even though this episode pushes up on the two-hour mark, it's definitely the first of at least be two, if not several more to come with Freeman. Because there's much,muchmore to talk about.
Are you into it? You wanna hear about all of the above plus a bunch more? Well, you can watch the vodcast right here or on our YouTube channel. If audio is your thing, download the podcast here or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you like it, please tell your friends, share us on social media, like the video, and don't forget to give us a five-star review. We hope you had half as much fun listening as we did recording it, and we'll see you next Sunday with another episode of The InEVitable. Please enjoy!
When I was just one-year-old and newly walking, I managed to paint a white racing stripe down the side of my father’s Datsun 280Z. It’s been downhill ever since then. Moral of the story? Painting the garage leads to petrolheads. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always had strong opinions about cars.
One day I realized that I should combine two of my biggest passions and see what happened. Turns out that some people liked what I had to say and within a few years Angus MacKenzie came calling. I regularly come to the realization that I have the best job in the entire world. My father is the one most responsible for my car obsession. While driving, he would never fail to regale me with tales of my grandfather’s 1950 Cadillac 60 Special and 1953 Buick Roadmaster. He’d also try to impart driving wisdom, explaining how the younger you learn to drive, the safer driver you’ll be. “I learned to drive when I was 12 and I’ve never been in an accident.” He also, at least once per month warned, “No matter how good you drive, someday, somewhere, a drunk’s going to come out of nowhere and plow into you.”
When I was very young my dad would strap my car seat into the front of his Datsun 280Z and we’d go flying around the hills above Malibu, near where I grew up. The same roads, in fact, that we now use for the majority of our comparison tests. I believe these weekend runs are part of the reason why I’ve never developed motion sickness, a trait that comes in handy when my “job” requires me to sit in the passenger seats for repeated hot laps of the Nurburgring. Outside of cars and writing, my great passions include beer — brewing and judging as well as tasting — and tournament poker. I also like collecting cactus, because they’re tough to kill. My amazing wife Amy is an actress here in Los Angeles and we have a wonderful son, Richard.Read More
