Harley Earl 1893-1969

The legendary General Motors design chief, Harley Earl, began his career, appropriately, in his father's Southern California coachbuilding shop, Earl Carriage Works. Young Harley, after attending Stanford's engineering department, joined the family firm, now known as the Earl Automobile Works, full-time in 1918 and switched the, Works' output to supplying motorcar bodies to the fast-growing motion picture industry. Within this base, Earl began to build up a collateral clientele by designing exotic customized bodies on commission from reigning Hollywood luminaries.

The Earl firm also provided custom body work for the large Southern California Cadillac dealer, Don Lee, who, noticing Earl's success, purchased the company in 1919. Lee insisted that young Harley remain as general manager, "doing the designing and run the body plant for him." The busines of supplying coachbuilt bodies and reconstruction work, in the early 1920s, to the luxury car trade was lucrative and the Lee-Earl partnership prospered. Eventually, they were turning out 300 bodies a year, even shipping some to India and Europe.

By this time, Harley Earl had developed a technique of using modeling clay to make display models. This allowed stylists and modelers greater freedom of expression and wider scope for innovative body work. Equally important, clay provided a more malleable medium than the prevalent plaster and wood model-making process.

Earl's success with the Don Lee Cadillac organization attracted the attention of Fred Fisher, patriarch of the famed Fisher Brothers. His enthusiasm for Earl's success with luxury cars eventually prompted Larry Fisher, president of Cadillac, to phone Don Lee and request that Harley Earl be sent to Detroit for consultation.

In January 1926, Earl was asked to submit a model for a new General Motors companion car to the Cadillac: the LaSalle. His styling inspiration reached back in his admiration for the well-regarded Hispano-Suiza. The model was a success and shortly afterwards Earl was, invited back to discuss a permanent position in the new styling department which was to be called the Art and Colour Section.

It was in May 1927 that he began to organize a centralized styling staff. When word got around GM that Harley Earl and Earnest Seaholm, the engineering operations chief, were looking for key men with special talents, several came forward. Ralph Pew (sketching), Joe Thompson (modeling), Howard O'Leary (administration) were among the first group. By late January 1928, Art and Colour had 50 men. Earl and his new styling department were underway and would, eventually, dominate the history of automotive design.

It should be pointed out that "styling" meant the reworking of the front and hood. This process included the all-important radiator grille design, a few body tweaks/exterior flourishes, and the signature tail lights. Almost everything else was done by the body and engine engineers. Gradually, as divisional identity became necessary and important, styling began to seize the initiative and divisional design studios came into being.

In the early 1930s, when the Great Depression began to decimate the independent carmakers, experienced designers became available to Earl's Art and Colour Section. Some of these legends were, Gordon Buehrig, Frank Hershey, Bill Mitchell, Henry Lauve. Clare MacKichan, Art Ross, and Ned Nickles.

These gifted designers, with many others, established the excellence that Earl was striving for and allowed him the time to supervise the development of many dream cars such as the pre-war Y-Job, the 1950s LeSabre, the 1953 Corvette fiberglass prototype; streamlined trains and buses, the Motorama exhibits of futuristic and current GM products; and styling themes and devices based on radical shapes such as fighter planes and rocket ships. He was designated Vice President of the newly formed Styling Division in 1937.

One design historian has noted that Earl's successes with Cadillacs, Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks brought him, by the time of his retirement in 1958, to a position of influence unequalled by any automobile designer before or since. Mr. Earl was a tall and imposing figure, always dressed to the height of fashion. Known for his stern personality, he was both feared and respected by his staff.

In the last few years of his career, Earl reportedly mellowed somewhat, allowing his senior design directors and their talented younger assistants freer reign in making design decisions He had even begun to groom a successor. But he remained in firm, overall control of General Motors design until almost the end of his tenure which, perhaps not coincidentally, marked the end of an age of excessive American automotive design.

Earl's influence on contemporary automotive design was truly significant. He was a giant innovator in his field of designing vehicles for success in the marketplace.

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