VICTORIA, B.C. –
To appreciate why Mimi Vandermolen is so pleased to notice one particular vehicle she’s walking past, you need to know that seeing this many cars in one place would have been unimaginable when she was growing-up in the post-war Netherlands.
“I think that only increased my interest (in cars) because there were so few,” says Mimi, adding she mostly saw people travelling on bicycles.
Young Mimi relished receiving Dinky Cars for her birthday, before spending her allowance on car magazines, including Motor Trend.
“Definitely design was my first love,” says Mimi, who was interested in how cars looked both inside and out.
After her family moved to Canada, Mimi studied Industrial Design in college —where she was the only woman in a class of 28 men.
After she graduated, she became one of the first female automotive designers at Ford.
“The first thing one of the (male) designers said, ‘OK, …