The life and works of eccentric designer Jacques Ostiguy

Automotive Design 13 Sep 2015

Canadian magazine AutoFocus has published an article and an exclusive gallery covering the interesting life and works of Jacques Ostiguy, a French-Canadian car designer known for the Chrysler Cordoba’s front end.

Jacques S. Ostiguy was a design professor at Carleton University and the Université du Québec, and worked as industrial designer for Bombardier’s Ski-Doo division and at Chrysler’s design studio.

In 2010 he was preparing an exhibition titled “In Search of the Canadian Car”. He passed away before completing this project, and after his death his collaborator David McGee, an archivist from the Canada Science and Technology Museum, had the task of evaluating the material which had been eventually donated.

McGee discovered an incredible collection of 513 1/18-scale model cars, along with a number of pictures and drawings, photos and sketches of production cars and futuristic concepts, often captioned with “very personal” – to say the least – comments and design analyses.

All this material has provided the basis for an interesting article published this week on Autofocus.ca. The story is complemented by a gallery of original design sketches.

At the moment the artworks are not yet publicly visible, and the Canada Science and Technology Museum is trying to figure out how to incorporate the often controversial material into a coherent exhibit/collection.