Automotive News - September 15, 2008 - (Page 82)

General Motors Story 28 /100 Pivot Point: Harley Earl creates a design empire Styling, once an afterthought, became important sales tool Boxy and black was out; the Earl era was curvy and colorful Larry Edsall hen Harley Earl was a teenager, his family spent summers camping at Bailey’s Ranch, in the mountains north of Los Angeles. When Earl was 16, the summer was particularly wet, and he fashioned a series of toy cars for himself and his younger brother from clay they found. “What Harley J. Earl began in the clay of Bailey’s Ranch, he later shaped into an industry of tremendous economic and social importance,” Automobile Quarterly said in 1982. Earl, wrote automotive historian Michael Lamm, “wasn’t the first man to ‘style’ a car, but he did create the business or industry of designing cars,” during his reign, leading General Motors styling through four decades. He “saw its tremendous potential in terms of car sales, and Harley Earl had the personality to convince the engineering-dominated auto industry to recognize its importance. “Making styling more than the frosting on the engineer’s cake was Harley Earl’s great contribution to the American economy.” a car GM wanted to fill a gap between its Cadillac and Buick brands. For three months, Earl and a GM model maker worked to create what would become the 1927 LaSalle, which is considered the first car from a major automaker designed with an artistic rather than an engineer’s eye. thing with style, something fashionable. He also recognized that changing designs encouraged people to buy cars more often. In 1927, Sloan established within GM an Art and Colour Section and hired 34-year-old Earl as its head. Earl would lead GM design until his retirement at the end of 1959. Earl filled his 50-person section with talent. Among his early hires were Gordon Buehrig, who later designed much-heralded Cords; John Tjaarda, who later did Lincolns and Packards; Frank Hershey, who long before designing the 1955 Thunderbird at Ford did the 1935 Pontiac with Earl; and Virgil Exner, who in the 1950s led Chrysler’s design studio and © GM Corp. become perhaps the only challenger to Earl’s supremacy among American car designers. Tom Hibbard, of Hibbard & Darrin in Paris, was recruited. Richard Teague, who would become chief designer at Packard and then design vice president at American Motors, worked in Earl’s studio. So did Strother MacMinn, whom many consider the most influential of all designers because of his long reign as chief instructor at the Art Center College of Design in California. W Mitchell, Jordan sign on Early on, Earl hired Bill Mitchell, a 23-yearold racer and advertising illustrator who would design a succession of outstanding GM vehicles before succeeding Earl as head of GM’s design department. In 1940, Earl was promoted to vice president, an unprecedented title for an auto designer, though his primary title remained the respectful “Mistearl,” as he was known within the GM studios. “He didn’t sketch, but he had this wonderful intuitive sense of where to go and what to do,” recalls Chuck Jordan, now 80, whose 40-year career in GM design studios began under Earl. Jordan, who retired in 1992 as head of GM design, remembers how Earl preferred to work in front of a large board using full-scale tape lines to create a car’s design. “He would have a gang of engineers and designers around him and he would put together the car,” Jordan says, remembering how nervous he was the first time Earl turned Taking on Ford Like Fisher, GM President Alfred Sloan liked Earl. Sloan was eager for GM to overtake Ford, which had ridden its black and boxy Model T to become the world’s largest automaker. Sloan was convinced that people wanted something more colorful — some- Hollywood style in Motown Before GM hired Earl in 1927, cars were designed either by engineers and technicians or by coachbuilders — people such as Earl’s father, who added some artistic style to the production cars. Earl’s father, J.W. Earl, was a lumberjack and sawmill operator in Michigan who moved to Los Angeles, where, at age 23, he opened a carriage shop. In 1908, Earl Carriage Works became Earl Automobile Works, producing windshields and other components for motorcars. Three years later, Earl Automobile Works began doing custom body work, especially for the stars of Hollywood’s budding film industry. Many of them were his neighbors in Hollywood, then still a farming community. Harley Earl was born in Hollywood in 1893. He was a good athlete and set a pole-vaulting record at the University of Southern California before his family sent him to Stanford with the hope that he would turn his attention from sports to law. Instead, he sustained a serious leg injury on the athletic field and returned home to recuperate and to work for his father. In 1918, Harley Earl started designing custom coachwork — long, low and racy styling that appealed to movie stars and other wealthy clients. Harley’s hires Harley Earl filled his Art and Colour Section with talent. Among his hires were Gordon Buehrig: Went on to design Cords John Tjaarda: Went on to design Lincolns and Packards Frank Hershey: Designed the 1955 Ford Thunderbird Virgil Exner: Led Chrysler design studio in 1950s Richard Teague: Later chief designer at Packard, then a vice president at American Motors Strother MacMinn: Influential longtime chief instructor at Art Center College of Design Bill Mitchell: Succeeded Earl as head of GM’s design department Harley Earl put GM at the forefront of styling. His 1927 LaSalle is considered the first production car to have been designed entirely by a stylist. He’s at the wheel, with Cadillac chief Larry Fisher. “Making styling more than the frosting on the engineer’s cake was Harley Earl’s great contribution to the American economy.” — Michael Lamm, historian everyone’s first designed by General Motors’ new Art ToColour Section surprise, theEarl wascar and under Harley — well, a disaster. Earl’s team’s initial effort came to be known as the “pregnant” 1929 Buick. The car had a bulge just below its belt line, and thus looked pregnant — but it wasn’t because of Earl’s design. Production engineers at Fisher Body and their cost-conscious allies within GM decided to change the car’s shape to make it easier to produce. To modern eyes, used to flowing curves and aerodynamic rounded auto bodies, the slight belt line bulge of the ‘29 Buick is almost invisible. But given the styling of the time — all flat surfaces and right angles — the car was a shocker. Walter Chrysler was the first to use the “pregnant” wisecrack, and it stuck. A battle ensued — and the saga of the bulging Buick ended well for Earl and his fledgling department. Enter Larry Fisher J.W. Earl sold his business to Don Lee, Cadillac’s West Coast distributor, and in 1919 and 1920, Harley Earl designed more than 100 custom bodies for Don Lee Coach and Body Works and for clients that included film stars Mary Pickford, Tom Mix and Fatty Arbuckle. In 1921, Lee introduced Earl to Cadillac President Richard Collins, who asked Earl to design six scale models that Collins could show to his dealers. Collins left Cadillac before the models were finished. Larry Fisher became Cadillac president and visited California to see Lee and Earl, who won the flamboyant Fisher’s favor by introducing him to several movie stars. Encouraged by his brother, Fred, a co-founder of Fisher Body, Larry Fisher hired Earl to design 82 September 15, 2008 Earl, who had Alfred Sloan’s ear, won the right to be consulted about any changes to designs that would be requested by the production department. Because of Sloan’s support, Earl’s power grew to legendary proportions. Chuck Jordan, who spent 40 years in GM design and retired as its leader, notes that when Earl “had a problem with a (division) general manager who said something like, ‘I don’t like that front end, Harley,’ Earl would just go to the phone. “ ‘Alfred,’ he’d say, ‘I have this fellow here who doesn’t like this design we did. Yes, I’ll tell him.’ ” The battle over the ’29 Buick not only solidified Earl’s status within GM, it made him realize that he needed engineers within styling to help head off such problems before they occurred. Thus Earl brought integrated vehicle design to GM and to the auto industry. He also made sure everyone — designers, The “pregnant” Buick of 1929 engineers and executives — would know how a car would look long before it rolled off an assembly line. One way he did so was by making sure two-dimensional drawings were transformed into full-sized clay models, so everyone might see the vehicle’s proportions in proper scale. Such clay modeling would become the industry standard and allowed better development of shapes and surfaces than was possible by simply trying to interpret a shape directly from a drawing into a metal form. — Larry Edsall AUTOMOTIVE NEWS © GM Corp. A shaky start: The ‘pregnant’ Buick

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