George McCowan is an industrial designer whose strength and passion lie in transportation design and automotive fine art. He is currently working as a digital designer for Navistar International Corporation. In 1998 McCowan graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Industrial Design. His career would eventually tale him to the Motor City, working at American Specialty Vehicles and the renown GM Performance Division design studio. While working in the field of automotive design, McCowan can claim several major design contributions on programs including the Corvette C6, Cadillac V-Series STS-V, XLR-V, Chevy SSR, Saleen S5S Raptor, and numerous performance and concept vehicles. McCowan has been a featured artist at the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, MI and also produces art for the United States Air Force.

Norman Garrett is a graduate of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech who went to work in the early 1980’s at Mazda and was the concept engineer of the Mazda Miata. The Mazda Miata is currently the best selling sports car in history.  Norman Garret now lives in Atlanta and has taught the internal combustion engines class in the school of mechanical engineering.  Norman was the guest speaker at the first annual Georgia Tech Auto Show in the spring of 2004.

Huebert Mees returned to graduate school at Georgia Tech to pursue his love of mechanical engineering in 1990. After graduating, he re-started his career at Ford Motor Company. While at Ford’s Jaguar division in England, he developed the independent rear suspension for the chassis of the Ford Thunderbird, Lincoln LS, and Jaguar S-type. After that assignment, he was chosen to be on Ford’s “Design Dream Team” and lead the chassis, brakes, steering, and suspension design of the Ford GT. He is currently a chassis architectures technical expert and the Supervisor of Basic Design Systems Integration for Ford Motor Company. Huibert was the guest speaker for the 2nd Annual Georgia Tech Auto Show in the Spring of 2005.

Jim Downing was a fraternity brother of Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough and a legend in endurance prototype motor racing since the 1960’s.  He has won all the prestigious endurance races including the 24 hours of Le Mans in a car that he designed and built in his personal shop with other Georgia Tech graduates such as Sam Garrett, Dave Lynn, and Wayne Yawn.  Along with his brother-in-law, he developed the HANS Device that has been such a significant improvement in racing driver safety.  Jim is currently the owner of Downing Atlanta, a company that builds, restores, and races vehicles in various sports car and formula car racing classes.

The famous Carroll Shelby applied to Georgia Tech and was accepted in the aerospace engineering department. He intended to begin classes as a freshman in the fall of 1941 at Georgia Tech, far away from where he graduated from high school in Dallas, Texas. He picked Georgia Tech to study engineering because of its reputation and because he had cousins living in the Atlanta area. The outbreak of World War II in Europe brought different priorities. Carroll Shelby changed his plans and joined the Army Air Corps to do his part in defending the USA. When he was discharged four years later, he was already married with a growing family. The necessity to support his family kept him from returning to his former plans to enter Georgia Tech’s AE program. He ventured into chicken farming instead, and was soon successful enough to start racing cars in his spare time.

Franco Cimatti is a 1981 graduate of mechanical engineering at Tech and now “concept engineering manager” at Ferrari Auto, SpA in Maranello, Italy. He is in charge of all new car platform design in the road car division of Ferrari: as he says in his words, “the blank sheet of paper part of the process”. Franco was the guest speaker for the 2006 Georgia Tech Auto Show. 360 Modena

The “Georgia Tech Auto Club” was very active in the 1950’s and worked with Hoyt Grimes to design and build the first rail-frame dragster in the southeast.  An Atlanta native named Pete Robinson that was involved with this club while at Georgia Tech went on to graduate in mechanical engineering.  After graduation he stunned the drag racing scene by winning the 1961 NHRA Nationals from out of nowhere thus giving him the name “Sneaky”.  He continued to be very successful during his entire racing career and was voted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in that organization’s second year (1992).

Roy Evans Born in Bartow, Georgia and a student at Georgia Tech in the 1920’s. He became the owner  of American Bantam in Butler, Pennsylvania. Seventy years before the first hybrids hit the highway, Evans’ now defunct American car company built several vehicles capable of traveling 50 miles on a single gallon of gasoline. Evans also lead a team in the design of the Jeep military vehicle just before WWII and before Willies got the contract to produce them.