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COPYRIGHT 2004 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com
Byline: Keith Naughton
Many fathers and sons bond over baseball. For Ed Welburn and his father, it was cars. Beginning when he was 2, Welburn and his dad would lie on the living-room floor of their Philadelphia home, scribbling away for hours. Dad, a car buff who owned an auto-repair shop, penciled long-nosed 1930s Duesenbergs, and little Eddie traced over them. Finally confident enough to draw on his own, Eddie, not yet 3, took down every book from his parents' shelves and scrawled cars inside their covers. When Evelyn Welburn discovered the graffiti in dozens of books, she didn't scold her toddler. "I told everyone, 'You should see what my little boy can do'," she recalls.
A half century after leaving his mark in Mom's books, Ed Welburn, 53, is living his childhood fantasy: he's the new chief designer for the world's largest automaker, General Motors. Only the sixth man to hold that job in GM's 95-year history, Welburn also is the first African-American to run the design studio of any major automaker. But he has landed his dream job at a time when GM design...
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