The G wagen summer 1977, we were doing all the body in white design drafting in high summer 35 plus degrees in the bottom floor of a block of flats in the Graz city centre that the agent "Peters & Zabransky" had rented out all the 3x flats on that floor and turned them into a drafting office, it had no aircon and a wall was all around the outside 3 metres away as anti break in so there was no air circulation available, it was a pure sweatbox and we were all doing 12-14 hours on our elbows drafting away for dollars on all of the 11 different vatiants (baumuster 1-11). I seldom used other than a straight edge and compass while whittling away on the drafting film and it shows in the shapes, I never heard about a clay model being done first to prove out the shape as is industry normal.
Audi TT, in 1995 I had just got back from Holland Michigan and I had been freshly trained in using Catia CAD which is the industry standard for cars and aircraft. I was there for a couple of weeks then I was put on the door design. The Austrian chief engineer told me to add a side impact door beam inside the door to protect the H point "hip area", he wanted me to add another bracket between the two front hinges to take this beam, the rear would lock onto the lock plate in the door. "What if "say I "we just angle the beam up as it goes forward and it can hook up with the top hinges strong point bracket that is already there as it is then well away from the hip, you will save two brackets per car plus welding and logistics and weight reduction with no loss on performance"? "Ah" says he "you are now my new door engineer", that's when I stopped drafting and became an engineer without having anything except some City & Guilds certificates behind me. Learning Catia CAD was an expensive waste of time for me as the versions have totally changed over the years.