ARRIVING at Ford as a car body designer in 1931 at the age of only 22, Eugene T. Gregorie soon became a power in the company and was responsible, among other things, for the consummately elegant Lincoln Continental, one of the most admired automobile designs of the 20th century. Combining flowing body contours with classic proportions, the Continental series was a delight to design aficionados, at the same time as being a huge commercial success.

When we look at the design at this distance it is difficult to believe that the Continental, with its streamlined wings, recessed headlights and flattened, snarling grille which gave it the look of a large, powerful cat, started life as a prewar car. In fact, it was first introduced in the autumn of 1939, and the Mark I, in saloon, coupe and cabriolet forms, was still going strong — with a break for production during the war — in 1948. It still looked advanced by European standards of car body design.

Gregorie had come into automotive design from yacht construction, when that industry began to feel the chill winds of the Depression. And he brought to the shaping of a car body the flair for creating soaring lines that had been characteristic of his marine work.

Eugene Turrenne “Bob” Gregorie was born in New York in 1908 and grew up on the East Coast, where he was imbued with a love of ships, principally steam yachts and sailing vessels.

After leaving school he had an apprenticeship with a New York marine design firm and in 1927 started work as a draughtsman at the Elco Boat Works in Bayonne, New Jersey. In the following year he moved to the yacht designers Cox & Stevens in New York. He also gained some experience of car body design, first at Brewster and then with General Motors.

After the stock market crash of 1929, commissions for luxury yachts began to dry up and he turned more decisively towards automotive design, hoping to bring to it some of the principles he had introduced to the shaping of yacht hulls.

At Dearborn, Michigan, Edsel Ford — the son of Ford’s founder and the firm’s boss since his father had handed the presidency to him in 1919 — was seeking to take modern design along paths that were to be poles apart from the cheap and robustly upright “Tin Lizzie” that had been so organic to the company’s original success.

In 1922 Ford had taken over the ailing Lincoln Motor Company with the intention of making it Ford’s luxury car arm, a field in which Edsel was particularly interested. Gregorie was recommended to him and employed as a draughtsman. His radical ideas and his ability to give them form soon began to impress themselves on Ford, who in 1935 put Gregorie in charge of the company’s new international styling group.

Gregorie set about modifying the rear-engined Lincoln Zephyr, which had been designed for Ford by John Tjaarda and Howard Bonbright of Briggs Manufacturing. He moved the engine to the front, replacing the short, sloping front bonnet or “hood”, with a pronounced pointed shape that owed a good deal to the prow of a ship — though in this case inverted. The result was a dramatic improvement to the design, producing a car whose front end was a thing of both grace and strength.

Gregorie’s revised Zephyr design, which was patented, was applauded by the Museum of Modern Art as the first successful streamlined car in the US.

This experience laid the foundation for Gregorie’s success with the Lincoln Continental, which made its debut just as war was breaking out in Europe. Gregorie always kept the design work in his own hands, seeing the shape through from first conception to realisation, rather than delegating details to other draughtsmen.

But he acknowledged Edsel’s role as a creative force in the Lincoln range. The Ford boss had plenty of good ideas of his own and the conceptual harmony between the two men enabled Gregorie to translate them into elegant but practical motorcars. The Mark I Lincoln Continental was succeeded by numerous models over the years, the final version, Mark VIII, being introduced in the 1990s. Indeed, it was only earlier this year that Ford announced that as part of a company restructuring the model would no longer be manufactured.

Edsel Ford died in 1943, and Gregorie left the company, in search of other design opportunities, before production of the Continental Mark I finished in 1948. Henry Ford II persuaded him to return to the company the following year, but he tended to find himself at loggerheads with the top management, and he left Ford finally after a further two years. In 1946 he moved to St Augustine, Florida, where he devoted himself to sailing and designing boats.

He is survived by his second wife, Evelyn.

Eugene T. Gregorie, car and yacht designer, was born in New York on October 12, 1908. He died in St Augustine, Florida, on December 1, 2002, aged 94.