17 November 2002

There is a commercial running on the tube these days, part of the hype for the Detroit�s new model year. It features a guy in a fedora who says his name is Harley Earl, and wants to sell you a car.

The New Year in Motown is not what it was once, when it ruled the production of global automobiles and strode like a colossus over the world economy. GM was the world�s largest company, a global power in its own right. Now it is just hanging on, beaten in quality by the foreigners, hurt by a soft Yen and a emerging Euro. Time was currency fluctuations didn�t mean that much. Styling sold cars, and stylists ruled the roost at the car companies. My Dad was part of tha, the sizzle that sold the automotive steak. Most of the names you will see below are mentors or peers, since Dad migrated to Detroit in 1948.

Harley Earl was king of the stylists, arguably the architect of the American Centiry.

Its appropriate that he was born in Hollywood. It was 1893. His father, J.W. Earl, was from Michigan and had worked there as a lumberjack in the North where my folks have retired. In 1889 the senior Earl moved his family to the west coast and became a coach maker, building carriages, wagons, and racing sulkies. With the advent of the automobile he founded Earl Automobile Works in 1908 and began making customized parts and accessories for cars. He started out building the whole car, but came to be what we know now as an after-market specialist, a customizer.

Larry Fisher, one of the seven “Body by Fisher” brothers of GM fame and head of the Cadillac division, had a problem in 1925. Rival manufacturer Packard had introduced the Packard Six, and GM management feared that this reasonably-priced higher-end car would draw show room traffic away from their Cadillac models. Meanwhile, in movie-town Hollywood, Cadillac dealer Don Lee had no such worries. His business was booming, and so many of his movie star and movie mogul customers wanted custom bodies on their new Cadillacs that in 1919 he had purchased the Earl Automobile Works.

By the time young Harley had graduated from Stanford, he was an enthusiast. His first job was a $28,000 streamlined auto body for Fatty Arbuckle. One of his more famous designs was a custom body with a saddle on the hood built for cowboy star Tom Mix.

A few of these “Earl bodied” cars made their way to New York City, where GM chairman Alfred Sloan, attending an auto show, noted that Earl’s cars were longer, lower, and wider than the competition’s. Larry Fisher might have heard about Harley Earl from Sloan, or he might have heard about him from his brother, Fred Fisher, who frequently played golf with young Harley Earl. In any event, around Christmas 1925 Fisher called Earl. Would Earl, he inquired, be willing to take on the task of designing Cadillac’s new sportier, less expensive  line, the LaSalle?

“You betcha,” said Earl, and, taking wife Sue in tow, he relocated to Detroit for what was to be a three-month stay. During that period, working in clay and wood, Earl produced four designs – a coupe, a roadster, a sedan, and an open touring car. He painted these models in black lacquer and mounted them on wheeled chassis. They were convincing. Fisher and other GM brass were convinced, too. The car, which Earl made no bones about having been influenced by the European Hispano-Suiza, went into production with only minor modifications. Earl accepted the congratulations of Fisher and other Cadillac managers, and then he headed home to California and Don Lee. Nine months later Larry Fisher called again (this time from Alfred Sloan’s office). Would Mr. Earl be interested in coming to Detroit to take charge of the “Art and Colour” department?

They spelled �Colour� the English way to denote class and style. Sizzle.

“You betcha,” replied Earl, and thus began the longest-ever, most influential reign by an American automotive designer.

One of Earl’s first assignments on arriving in Detroit was the body design for the 1927 LaSalle, the first edition of Cadillac’s companion make. It would be the first mass produced car to be styled in the modern sense. Its lines were gracefully handsome, reminiscent of the contemporary Hispano-Suiza – not much of a surprise, since Earl was quite familiar with European design trends of the day.

That first LaSalle was an instant hit, and many attributed its success to styling. The connection wasn’t lost on GM’s astute managers, and Earl was soon invited by president Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., to work for the company full time, with the specific task of setting up an in-house styling department. Earl organized it as the Art and Colour Section; the English spelling for color was his way of denoting prestige. It was an industry first, and from here on, the professional hand of the stylist would be increasingly evident in American automotive design.

Earl had an eye for talent, and an ability to give young people room to grow. Art & Colour was the incubator of design. Gordon Buehrig, designer of the classic Cord, gained experience there and later was chief stylist at Duesenberg. When that company foundered Buehrig returned to General Motors. Here he participated in one of the design competitions Harley Earl periodically held to stimulate the creativity of his stylists. Far different from the standard look of the time, Buehrig’s design had a coffin-shaped nose and horizontal hood louvers that contrasted sharply with the upright grilles that were then typical. The hood, coupled with flowing pontoon fenders and hidden headlights, put the car on the cutting edge of the streamlined look. Buehrig’s fellow stylists thought his design the winner, but Earl and the other GM executives placed Buehrig’s radical car last. Later in 1933 Duesenberg president Harold Ames invited Buehrig back to style a “baby Duesenberg” intended to fill the price gap between the awesomely expensive Model J Duesenberg and the middle-priced Auburn. Buehrig’s GM design contest entry became the basis of the “baby Duesenberg” design.

Earl was not afraid to make bold choices. When he appointed the 23 year old Mitchell as Cadillac’s chief stylist in 1936, there were some raised eyebrows, but no dissenters. It would take young Mitchell only two years to vindicate Earl. Earl instructed Mitchell to design a new LaSalle model based on the Series 60 Cadillac. The Cadillac was rather conservative, and Mitchell’s mandate was to design a car at the sportier end of the spectrum. As the beauty of the design emerged, and the expenses mounted, it was decided after some soul searching that this less-than-conservative car should be a Cadillac. The 1938 Sixty Special was the result. The Sixty Special broke new ground in several styling areas, and would have a profound impact not only on Cadillac, but on all American automobile shapes for years to come.

Earl’s approach to his work was impressive. To evolve the form of various body components, he pioneered the use of modeling clay, then considered a highly unusual material for the purpose. My Dad started as a clay modeler in the Ford design studio, working like Earl, on �dream cars.� One of the first projects he worked on was the Ford Levi-Car, a preposterous and futurist jet-flying automobile that actually appeared to lift off the ground.

Earl also created complete automobiles. Main body, hood, fenders, lights, and other elements were conceived in relation to each other so as to blend into a harmonious whole. This contrasted with most custom body builders, who worked from the cowl back, leaving a car’s stock front end pretty much intact.

Quick to realize that one person couldn’t hope to carry the styling workload at GM, Earl surrounded himself with talented designers, many of whom would owe him their careers. My Dad was one of the legion of talented young men who came to Detroit to implement the vision of people like Harley Earl.

Many of the young men were dinner table names at our house.

Then there was Virgil Exner, destined to win fame with Chrysler Corporation’s “Forward Look” in the mid Fifties, trained under Earl and headed the Pontiac studio in the Thirties. Other luminaries like Frank Hershey, Art Ross, Ned Nickles, and William L. Mitchell learned their craft from Earl, making their marks at Cadillac and Buick. Clare MacKichan, who helped create the classic 1955 Chevy, was yet another pupil. Earl’s impact on the shape of GM cars was enormous- and in  fact, GM�s cars determined the infrastructure that supported them, from freeways to drive-in movies. For most of his 31 years with the company, the GM design philosophy and Earl’s philosophy were one and the same. By extrapolation, the adage that �what�s good for GM is good for America� was the same as saying the Harley Earl�s vision was America�s future.

Earl was a playful designer, combining whimsy with function. He was a big guy, six-two, and he wore a hat and bright suits and two-toned shoes. His adage �lower, wider, longer is better� changed the face of our nation. He had a visual perspective most of his designers lacked. Accordingly, they’d often work while standing on wooden boxes to view their efforts the way he’d seen them – though they never did so in his presence. Earl’s way of seeing things explains the distinctive ribbed or fluted roof of the 1955-57 Chevrolet Nomad, as well as the use of brushed aluminum – one of his favorite materials – on the roof of the 1957-58 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham and, before that, a variety of show cars.

Show cars were Earl’s favorite projects. Nothing pleased him more than personally designing many of the Motorama experimentals, including the original Corvette. His very first “dream car” may well have been his most influential. The Buick “Y-Job” of 1938 literally defined the shape of the Detroit cars for the next two decades with its dramatically low body, absence of traditional running boards, strong horizontal lines, and long boattail deck. Though it doesn’t look so modern now, the Y-Job boasted features that still aren’t that common today, such as hidden headlights.

Earl’s other show models were equally striking. Instead of a rear bumper, the experimental Oldsmobile F-88 of 1954 had seven nerf bars nestled between twin tail pieces.

Aircraft design influenced much of Earl’s work. For example, the trend setting tailfins that first appeared in production on the 1948 Cadillac were inspired by the twin-tail Lockheed P-38 Lightning, a World War II pursuit plane powered by GM built Allison engines. During the war years, Earl took his designers to see the plane, then under development at the Lockheed plant in California. They returned to their studios, where Earl had them adapt several of the fighter’s design elements for GM’s first postwar cars. According to Irwin W. Rybicki, who succeeded Bill Mitchell as head of GM Design Staff in 1977, Earl favored rounded, massive forms like the P-38’s, and these showed up in the pontoon fenders, fastback roofs, and heavy chrome accents that came to characterize GM’s early postwar look. Even the first Corvette sported rocket-like vestigial fins.

GM and Earl tested new ideas on the public with a traveling Motorama that toured the U.S. from 1953 to 1961. The “fabulous fifties” saw some of the most beautiful and some of the most outlandish vehicles ever made. New expressways were built to accommodate all the new automobiles. They led to new suburbs with drive-in theaters and drive- in restaurants that allowed patrons to remain in their comfy cars.

But the 1950s and ’60s were also a shaking out period for the manufacturers. Ten car companies became four. The casualties included Studebaker, Nash, Kaiser-Frazer, Hudson, Packard, Willys and Crosley and the consolidation made what remained all the more pervasive and powerful.

One observer lamented, “styling became tyrannical” and another said, “Chrome was god, and Harley Earl was its prophet.” Oldsmobile designer Richard L. Teague (He later became chief stylist at American Motors, where my Dad was his deputy) once told a story of having two sets of chrome designs for Earl to choose from. By mistake both sets had been put on the same design and Earl said, “Fellas, you got it.” The car was produced with both sets of chrome overlays as the stylists shrunk in horror.  Teague said employees always called the boss Mr. Earl. “He demanded respect and he got it. All us young guys were afraid of him. He kind of scared everybody half to death but he was still a terrific guy.”

Harley Earl liked to do things his way, and he usually had the wherewithal to accomplish them. He never lost his enthusiasm for cars during his long GM career, which helps explain the long and hard fight for the production Corvette that came toward the end of that career – a car he kept fighting for throughout its difficult infancy. Enthusiasts generally agree that the impetus for the first Corvette came from Harley Earl, pioneering automotive stylist and founder of GM’s Art and Color Section. Some observers consider him to be more the Corvette’s “father” than even engineer Zora Arkus Duntov.

To be sure, the fiberglass bodied two-seater could not have progressed from Motorama dream car to production reality without Earl’s backing. He fought for the Corvette from the very first, against some fairly stiff odds, and for a reason: It was just his sort of car. Of course, Earl carried considerable clout with GM management, the kind that comes from a swift, sure rise to fame and a winning track record. Right up to his retirement, Earl continued looking for new ways to keep his cars exciting, yet always within the bounds of public acceptance.

A good example is the car that is the essence of the last half of the American Century, the Corvette. Earl took the futuristic Le Sabre design to the Watkins Glen sports car race right around the time I was born. Earl was very impressed with the Jaguars, Ferraris, and Alfas, and decided to begin designing a new American sports car. I was three months old and mewling in a row house near Six Mile in Detroit When he assigned Bob McLean to draw a layout for a sports car for General Motors.

In 1952, Naugatuck Chemical presented fiberglass technology  to General Motors, a break throughthat permitted light-weight auto-bodies. The technology encouraged Earl to speed-up GM sports car development. In April of 1952 Harley Earl’s plaster model two-seater convertible went on display in General Motors’ private viewing auditorium, and by the end of the month Earl’s crew completed a full-size plaster model of his sports car project. (I think my Dad�s great pal Bob Verizer was on that team- he had one of the original fish-eyed �Vettes in his garage for years after). Dad had just moved to American Motors to work for chief stylist Ed Anderson.

In June of 1952, I was one year old and General Motors executives were formally presented with  Earl’s proposal for a 2-seater sports car. The project was code-named the “Opel Sports Car.� General Motors president Harlow Curtice and Chevrolet general manager Thomas Keating approved production of a sports car prototype for the 1953 Motorama. No one who was not part of that era can imagine how important that show was.

So when Harley Earl comes on the TV today to sell you a car, that is who he was. He  put his personal stamp on more different cars than any other individual. The ads may be selling Buicks, but the Corvette might be his most personal contribution to history. His last concept car was the Cadillac Cyclone of 1959. It was a wild thing, more fighter plane than automobile.

By the time of General Motors’ 50th anniversary in 1956, Earl had directly supervised the design of more than 35 million cars. All told he indirectly influenced the designs of more than 60 million cars. The next time you see a Corvette, think of him.

Harley Earl died of stroke at the age of 75 at his home in West Palm Beach on April 10, 1969, the year we made it to the Moon. Whoever the actor is who plays him catches at least the essence of the man. The one who put the sizzle in our steak and the fins on our cars.

Longer, Lower, wider. Better.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra with T.L. Stone, Vivian M. Baulch and the Staff of the Internet