EARL TOO MUCH CREDIT

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Just got done reading the article by Harvey Gieger about Harley Earl. I think calling Earl the Leonardo da Vinci of Detroit is realy over stating things quite

a bit. I can never understand why Earl gets all the credit and attention that he has gotten over the years, the man is vastly over rated. Wednesday night I will try to give some examples. </div></div>

Hmmm,

Well of course, Harley Earl had his "klinkers", but he also had far more successes. I think that certainly, his own design of the first LaSalles, and the designs he coordinated for the 1932 model year, as well as 1941, and 1955 certainly stand out as landmark years for not only GM but the auto industry in general.

Art Anderson

Of course people will go after Harley's status...it happens with all great men who push the envelope and make a mark on the world. Earl was not the only man who made an impact but for some reason, probably good PR and personal drive, he stands out. How do you make such a claim, that one man does not deserve his reputation? It is a matter of history which we all know is part fact, part legend and part fantasy. Bill Mitchell deserves equal billing but rarely gets the lime light. Still he was there all of those years working with Earl, producing significant designs, if not beautiful ones. Have you ever seen the 1953 Bonneville concept? Oh my god.

I think we give Harley his due out of respect for the powerful personality he had to push through ideas that might have otherwise been suppressed. He was a powerhouse...a real hard man to work for and a monster in so many ways, but like so many like him, look at what he was able to produce even in a huge company like GM? Too much credit? Perhaps. But after he retired, things certainly became less grand. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Randall: You asked how I can make such a claim about Hsrley Earl. Simple I think I know about the history and of the other designers of the same time span as Earl. Earl had the advantage over many other top designers of the era because of the big staff that he had. What Earl had was the ability to look at other peoples design ideas and put them together. Thursday night I will go into more detail when I have more time

By all accounts, Harley Earl, perhaps more than anyone else, moved automobile body design out and away from where it had been prior to his arrival at General Motors in 1926. Up until that time, save for a few attempts both here in the US, and in Europe, the design and production engineers had dictated the look of a car; all one has to do is look at any pre-1927 car, and see how the mechanicals of the vehicle dictated its look, its appearance. In this country, however, that began to change, forever, with the introduction of the LaSalle, for which car Earl did the body styling work. Of course, he borrowed greatly from other cars, many from Europe, to give the LaSalle its stunning appearance, but then, it can be argued that in all areas of manufacturing, where styling was, and is used, much is borrowed, blended in, tweaked, in order to get to a final design, that's pretty much the way of it. Not often does a stylist have the opportunity to "plow fresh ground" completely, and even less often does a completely new concept truly garner wide acceptance.

The historical accounts point out that by the very early 1930's, Earl seems to have spent less time at a drawing board creating new designs, but rather acted as the manager, coaching, goading, and infuriating (and also summarily firing) other, subordinate designers. But then, in the design world, I suspect that a lot of the latter went on, and to a degree it does still today.

It's pretty hard to argue with success, IMHO. Certainly, as car buyers became less and less concerned with the latest mechanical concepts, or tweaks of existing engines, chassis, transmissions and the like; but more influenced by the look, the "packaging" of those components, styling became an important factor by which people bought new cars (and today, it still does: One only has to look at the dismal failure of the Pontiac Aztec, arguably a pretty decent vehicle, but in most minds it seems, incredibly ugly).

For much of his career, Earl seems to have had his finger on the pulse not only of "today", but the near future as well, when it came to what a car should look like. And it showed, on the sales charts. While other makers often struck out into uncharted territory where styling and design were concerned, General Motors seemed to almost always have followed a dictum of never obsoleteting completely last year's model with this years new offerings, especially valuable when working to convince new car buyers that when it would come time to trade it in for the next new car, it would have a decent-better than decent trade in value (and GM cars, from the late 30's through the 60's at least, held, on average, the best tradein values in the industry).

Earl's direction at GM Styling led to the creation of stunning dream cars (concept cars), many of which are considered timeless today, in sharp contrast to the mostly today-unknown-concept-cars from Ford, Chrysler and the independents during the heyday of dream cars, the 1950's.

However, one's acceptance or distaste for the style of any car (or any styled consumer product for that matter) is very much a matter of personal taste, always has been, and always will be, I think. There's nothing wrong with that. But to arbitrarily condemn a stylist or head of styling for any company in a seemingly blanket manner is just one person's opinion, to be balanced against the opinions of the rest of the world. I do believe the "rest of the world", in this case the "world" being the American car-buying public during the years that Harley Earl reigned supreme as GM's Vice President of Styling seem to have voted overwhelmingly in favor of what they saw at Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac dealerships, voting with the most important ballots in the industry, their hard-earned cash, by buying GM cars overwhelmingly instead of the products of others.

Art Anderson

Art, you said in a much more complete and intelligent manner exactly what I was trying to say in far too few words. I am not saying you, Packard53, are wrong to hold your beliefs. I simply wanted to say that Harley was a unique individual and a powerful hand in the design field. I do like much for what he did and what he was trying to do. You may dislike Earl, think he was a thief and a crank, or a brilliant stylist and driving force in the industry. As Art said, it really is a matter of opinion. No argument here on it.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Randall: You asked how I can make such a claim about Hsrley Earl. Simple I think I know about the history and of the other designers of the same time span as Earl. Earl had the advantage over many other top designers of the era because of the big staff that he had. What Earl had was the ability to look at other peoples design ideas and put them together. Thursday night I will go into more detail when I have more time </div></div>

Packard53,

I wonder if perhaps part of your concerns is due to the very simple fact that Harley Earl, quite rapidly, created not just an "Art & Color" office at GM, but rather a large and varied styling department?

As this is the Classic Car Club of America bulletin board, I would assume that a great many readers are in to the great Classics, many of which were truly styled by one or two designers working pretty much alone: Gordon Buehrig, Howard "Dutch" Darrin, Philip Derham, and so on. Of course, if you read up on the life and career of Harley Earl, he too was a "one man band" stylist, when working first for Earl Body Works (his father's coachbuilding firm in Los Angeles, then for Don Lee Cadillac (where GM's management first took note of him).

By the mid-1930's, at General Motors, he had a fairly large staff of stylists under him. Certainly by the 1950's, he controlled the styling activities of a large group, numbering in the low hundreds (Claire MacKitchen, Chevrolet's chief stylist at the time of the 55-58 Chevies) once told me that he had a dozen stylists working on tail light treatments for the 1957 Chevy alone!

Certainly, Harley Earl did not design every GM car for which he's given credit in the popular press, but then neither did Virgil Exner personally style every finned Chrysler product, and most certainly, Raymond Loewy did not personally style the 1939 Studebaker Champion, the postwar "which way is it going" Studebaker, and absolutely not the fabled 1953 Studebaker "Loewy Coupe" (Robert Bourke, in perfect vision "look back at history" gets the call for that one).

No, it's the heads of styling who get the credit for what their subordinates do. The same can be said of engine design: Edward N. Cole, for example, gets credited in the popular press for the famous and long running Chevrolet small-block engine, when in fact this revolutionary V8 was the result of several hundred engineers working on it.

What I'm saying here is, in any endeavor where the team is large, someone has to take the credit for failure/success. In industry, just as in government, the military, all walks of life, that "someone" tends to be the person in charge of the project at hand. Certainly if the project "bombs", the leader is the one who gets his head lopped off and handed to him. Conversely, if the project is a success, then should not the same person be accorded the credit (and in that, acknowledge the team players who made the success happen?).

If you read Collectible Automobile Magazine readily, several times per year, they run interview articles about the various personages in the past of the auto industry, and for the most part, these are not the famous executives, but interviews with people who were there, in the 9-5 trenches. These articles, in their aggregate might give you a pretty balanced view of who did what, and who was who in the styling, and the engineering side of the auto industry in years past.

Art Anderson

Mr. Anderson: A reply will be coming tonight or saturday night, when I have some free time.

Mr. Anderson: When I look at what the truly great designers of that period, such as the great Raymond Dietrich, Alex de Saknoffsky, Howard Darin, Tremulis, and Gordon Buehrig did with no design staff to help them is truly amazing to me.

Everybody brags about Earls design of the first LaSalle, seems he got a lot of his ideas for the LaSalle design after visiting the car show circut in France from what I have read.

I think what Tremulis did with the design of the Chrysler Thunderbolt and Newport are far more advanced in design than Earls Buick Y job. Somebody mentioned about the 1941 GM line up I guess refering to how good they looked. To me nothing in the GM line up that year compairs to what Dutch Darin did in 10 days with no staff and the basic design he did on the Packard Clipper. The 1951 LaSabre that earl was supposed to have disgned himself is just down right butt ugly in the front end,. It looks like an ant eater with it mouth open and two bumpers hung on it.

I guess that the main point I am trying to get across is that Earls design talents are vastly over stated in compairision to the Great designers that I have mention above. As I will state again Earl was very good at taking others design work and putting elemets together to make some great looking cars.

I guess you must think that I am out in left field in my thinking, but this is the conclusion that I have come to after doing alot of extensive reading and research over the last five years.

Perhaps Harley Earl was the Glenn Miller of domestic auto design; as much deft arranger, businessman and manager as artist. Skilled cheeseparing sold GMobiles as much as style. GM accounting for over half of all vehicles on the road, and mainstream historians' tendency to focus only on the major player, heightened Earl's standing. For sheer artistry and restraint, perhaps Ford's Bob Gregorie was the Artie Shaw, the true artist.

Michael Lamm's & Dave Holls' "A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design" (c'96 Lamm-Morada Publishing Co.,Inc.) details many more. As previous posters mention, it helps to also know European and English design. Dutch Darrin certainly did. Detroit, and Earl, didn't exist in a vacuum. [color:\\"black\\"]

Mr. Anderson: Here is some interesting information about Harley Earl and where he got his ideas for design in the 20's when going to work for GM.

Earl freely admitted that he was inspired by the Hispano-Suiza, which he had long admired on the Continent. All the chic people who appreciated cars drove Hispanos, he said every line meant something I stole alot of stuff.

Alfred Sloan said to Larry Fisher I think we should send Earl to the Paris Auto Show. Larry Fisher replied to Sloan I already have his ticket. In Paris Earl filled five note books with measurements. Earl said i went all over those cars and underneath them. Earl tried to hire the peole responsible for them. He bought all the photographs that he could. Thus bringing them back to Detroit to oraganize a division on designing arts and color to act in an advisory capacity for all divisions of General Motors.

It even seems that back in the begining Earl borrowed other peoples ideas and designs to get the ball rolling at GM.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mr. Anderson: Here is some interesting information about Harley Earl and where he got his ideas for design in the 20's when going to work for GM.

Earl freely admitted that he was inspired by the Hispano-Suiza, which he had long admired on the Continent. All the chic people who appreciated cars drove Hispanos, he said every line meant something I stole alot of stuff.

Alfred Sloan said to Larry Fisher I think we should send Earl to the Paris Auto Show. Larry Fisher replied to Sloan I already have his ticket. In Paris Earl filled five note books with measurements. Earl said i went all over those cars and underneath them. Earl tried to hire the peole responsible for them. He bought all the photographs that he could. Thus bringing them back to Detroit to oraganize a division on designing arts and color to act in an advisory capacity for all divisions of General Motors.

It even seems that back in the begining Earl borrowed other peoples ideas and designs to get the ball rolling at GM. </div></div>

And, did I not say essentially the same thing? In design, be it the engineering of a car (any part of a car), or styling (creating the shapes of the exterior, the trim, etc., of the interior), there has always been the "lifting" of ideas, of shapes, of lines (yes, and even the engineering concepts of engines, suspensions, on and on), so why the sudden criticism of Harley Earl? After all, if one looks at some of the body designs Earl created for the Earl Body Works, and later Don Lee Coachworks, one sees a lot of similarities between them and cars of European design, particularly French luxury cars.

It has been extremely well documented by automotive historians (and admitted to, freely, by Mr Earl himself, as you point out) that the Hispano Suiza was a primary inspiration for the first LaSalle, but so what? The LaSalle bodywork, shapes, etc., wasn't truly a case of plagiarism, but rather inspired a new look at Cadillac. One can make a far greater case for nearly direct copying if one but looks at the 1931 Chrysler Imperial, whose stylist (name escapes me here) who lifted almost directly, the Alan Leamy styling of the L-29 Cord radiator shell, fenders, even the overall proportions of the car.

Once the various automakers moved away from a purely engineering approach to bodywork design, and began employing artists (and Earl was first and foremost, and artist, an artist specializing in the creation of automotive bodywork shapes), then the style of a car became a very, very important marketing tool, which of course, Harley Earl (and you yourself by your allusion to this) certainly understood. Successful stylists, in the long run, have always looked at what the competition (be it here, or abroad) were doing, in order to spot (if they could) emerging popular trends which they felt essential to incorporate, again as marketing tools for the cars they were creating.

Seldom do purely new automotive body styling shapes emerge, and then become long-term successes. The "one man band" styling departments of years ago have produced significantly different cars, but all to often, they were really "blind alley" designs. While of course, this bulletin board is really for those who celebrate the great Classics of the 1925-48 era, and of course, "La Creme de la Creme" of Classic Cars are those which were truly one-off designs, a great many of them simply did not pass the test of time, and were often never even looked at for inspiration.

Again, I think your disappointment and criticism of Harley Earl is that, for whatever reason, he did not create a totally new, "cut from whole cloth" body design and elements for that first LaSalle. However, I would submit that neither did the designers of the basic elements (radiator shell, hood line, fender & running board lines) of the Hispano Suiza that so captivated Earl "create" that car from "whole cloth" either. After all, the high radiator & hood line, flowing fenders, relatively high beltline/low windshield were already in evidence at other european marques, in which case the question becomes: Just who did Hispano Suiza copy?

Be all this that it may, most certainly, by 1933, GM Styling was well on their way in creating a totally American look, totally! Nowhere in the rest of the planet were stylists yet creating the same sort of rounded lines, the pontoon fenders, on and on, that were coming from GM by the time of the '33 World's Fair Cadillac V16. And yet, by the middle of the decade, every stylist in the US auto industry was lifting concepts, proportions, pontoon fenders and the like from GM--so guess what? By your "definition", even Edsel Ford was copying, lifting ideas from others as he worked with both Ford and Lincoln stylists to create the Ford Motor Company cars of the years 1937-42. Certainly, Chrysler, Hudson, Nash, Studebaker, Graham, and even Gordon Buehrig at Auburn seem to have been inspired by what was coming out of GM. Thus it remained well into the 1950's and beyond: Save for Chrysler from 1957 forward, GM was the leader, all others seemed to follow along. And, in that, I would say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Now, had Earl claimed the 1927 LaSalle as "his sole creation", his new twist on how a car should look, and NOT acknowledged the inspiration gained from the Hisso, then he would have been very much a sham, a bit of a charlatan, and correctly deemed little more than a copycat.

My opinion, about which, in this case, I shall not be humble.

Art Anderson

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mr. Anderson: When I look at what the truly great designers of that period, such as the great Raymond Dietrich, Alex de Saknoffsky, Howard Darin, Tremulis, and Gordon Buehrig did with no design staff to help them is truly amazing to me.

[color:\\"blue\\"] True enough. However, Dietrich, once past the 30's, never again achieved any real success as a stylist of truly marketable automobiles. De Saknoffsky really didn't either. If one looks at his American Austins, well, the closed bodies sure have a certain Model A Ford look to them, although the little roadster seems to have a flair of originality, until one comes to the sweep panel, which sure does look like a Derham idea to me. Tremulis was far too radical in his design thinking for most people, just look at the Tucker. Buehrig, master stylist he was in the 30's, fell away to passing his later years, postwar, as a staff stylist for Ford Motor Company, with due credit for the 1951 Ford Crestline Victoria roofline, and the shapes of the 1952-56 Ford station wagons.

Everybody brags about Earls design of the first LaSalle, seems he got a lot of his ideas for the LaSalle design after visiting the car show circut in France from what I have read.

I think what Tremulis did with the design of the Chrysler Thunderbolt and Newport are far more advanced in design than Earls Buick Y job. Somebody mentioned about the 1941 GM line up I guess refering to how good they looked. To me nothing in the GM line up that year compairs to what Dutch Darin did in 10 days with no staff and the basic design he did on the Packard Clipper. The 1951 LaSabre that earl was supposed to have disgned himself is just down right butt ugly in the front end,. It looks like an ant eater with it mouth open and two bumpers hung on it.

[color:\\"red\\"] I believe Ralph Roberts is credited with the Chrysler Thunderbolt, and the Newport. However, of the two, only the Thunderbolt was predictive of anything to come afterward, the Newport was pretty much a blind alley, stylewise. The Thunderbolt was very much predictive of the future, particularly the "flow through lines" that hit the mass production cars in 1949.

However, the Y-Job is a far more predictive car, when one looks at its proportions (incidently, drawn right out of the Classic Car era), blended with the new, the modern. However, it was simply a dream car, of course, and only one was built. The LeSabre is a love it or hate it design. True enough for me in that I loathed that dream car (for years), until gradually I began to realize that many shapes, elements and features not only reflected the growing public fascination with the burgeoning "jet age" (and incidently, many of the elements of Le Sabre were directly copied in Europe in the 1950's, where the car had been extensively shown, even driven). A good number of the design elements found their way into the very popular Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac cars of the 50's. However, one of the all-time cleanest of GM dream cars found its way almost totally unchanged, into production, that being the 1952 Corvette dream car, which with some detail changes, found itself a production car 1953-55, and many elements of that design were still in practice at Corvette through 1962.

I guess that the main point I am trying to get across is that Earls design talents are vastly over stated in compairision to the Great designers that I have mention above. As I will state again Earl was very good at taking others design work and putting elemets together to make some great looking cars.

[color:\\"blue\\"] Earl's talents went much, much farther than merely "board & airbrush time". His real talent was in getting the best out of the very gifted stylists with whom he surrounded himself at GM during his tenure. Earl's brightest star pupil seems to have been one William Mitchell, whose designs (when he was the principle, lead stylist of a projected car) are simply timeless. Unlike the designers you mention (and each was a great designer/stylist, in his own right, in his own heyday), Mitchell's work, inspired and encouraged by Earl, made the quite difficult transition from the mid-30's (his crowning 30's design being the 1939 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special--a timeless and much admired (and inspirational!) car, all the way to the GM cars of the early 1960's, by which time Mitchell had assumed the "mantle" from Earl--no longer doing the actual designing, but coaching, goading, and inspiring those on his staff to create winning looks (and like Earl, most of them were). Both were as much managers of the work of others as they were themselves creative stylists.

I guess you must think that I am out in left field in my thinking, but this is the conclusion that I have come to after doing alot of extensive reading and research over the last five years. </div></div>

[color:\\"blue\\"] No, you aren't out there in left field at all. After all, we humans all come with certain standard equipment, and opinions are just that, standard equipment. I too, as a "car guy", and as a builder of scale model cars (replicas, not hot rods or lead sled customs) for 52 years have also done extensive reading, and studying of the cars I have wanted to model. We both read the same books, look at the same pictures, see the same cars, but we each have our own, unique opinion. And, the world would be a much poorer place if that is all we could do, just simply be of one uniform opinion.

Art Anderson

Mr. Anderson: First of all Thank You for the correction on the Chrysler Newport.

Let deal with Raymond Dietrich first. After founding the great design house Lebaron, he threw his lot in with the Murray. After Murray went out of business Walter P. Chrysler hired Raymond were he did design work for Chrysler until Walter P died.

Teh Count did design work for many independent car firms, and as you have noted for Austin. With the position that Austin was in at the time no matter what styling the Count would have come up with it cdetainly wasn't going to make much of a note in the history books. One of the Counts fault was that he always needed money because of his life style, and certainly didn't do a good job on the Austins closed coupes. However I would urge you to take alook at some of the Counts other work, the styling that he did for Packard, and the 1930 Cord L29 coupe he desinged.

As the end of the 30's came and most of the independents went out of business there was less and less demand for people likne Raymond and the Count. I wonder how long Earls career would have lasted if he hand't been employed by GM. I would guess it would have faded into nothing by the 40's, kind of like the Count and Raymond.

Now to deal with the design of the 53 Corvette. Earl and his staff got lucky on this one for having the spot in historry that it doses. If Ford had not come out with the Thunderbird in 1955, the 53 Corvette design would have been mearly a footnote note in history. Take the case of Trumilus. You make a reference to his Tucker design. I believe that if Preston Tucker hadn't run into money troubles and interference by the the US goverment and other outside interfernece, the Tucker might have well go into production. If this would have happened Trumilus design of the Tucker would have had a great impact on the the rest of the auto firms designs at that time.

While Mitchell's design of the 1939 Caddy 60 Special wasn't to bad. In my opinion the design that Bob Gregorie did of the 1939 Lincoln Continental is certainly the better of the two. However niether design holds a candle to Dutch Darins basic design of the Packard Clipper

Saknoffsky did a great job on the custom-bodied Cord L-29 coupe, that one is superbly laid out, and of course was beautifully executed in real life.

Howard "Dutch" Darrin did a great job with the Packard Darrin cars, no question about that. Alex Tremulis was more than just a bit "out of the box" as a stylist, however. Only time would have told whether the Tucker would have made it, of course, but keep in mind, Tremulis wasn't the only designer working on that car, there were several, but of course, Tremulis does get the credit, simply because it was his basic concept that ruled.

As for the Corvette, I think it is questionable whether Thunderbird was the sheer motivation for that car's staying in production--after all, the early 'vette was no sales star, and certainly no profit center. However, Corvette had some strong backers within GM, not the least of whom were Earl, Mitchell, Ed Cole (Chevy's GM, later General Motors President, "father of the Chevy V8). Interesting that you didn't note Frank Hershey, who headed up the 1955 Thunderbird design--Hershey comes right out of the Classic Car era also).

However, back to Dutch Darrin: Until his ties with Kaiser-Frazer post-WWII, Darrin really hadn't truly tackled a total design project, meaning all the elements of a car. While stunning, the Packard Darrin was basically a "California Custom" car. Some channeling, some sectioning, and a bit of panel beating, and voila! A new body style for a Packard. Now, I am not demeaning that effort whatsoever, no way. Every Packard Darrin ranks way up there in my book.

Ray Dietrich, on the other hand, really wasn't quite able to adapt away from the Classic Era type of style. HIs influence upon the evolving styling of cars waned considerably as the 30's wore on.

Bob Gregoire and Edsel Ford made a fabulous team, without question. However, the automotive world knows Gregorie far better for his design and execution of Fords from 1933 to 48. His sense of balance in design (save for the stubby 37 Fords, which were the result of Henry Ford's meddling more than anything) seems to have come from his passion for marine design (where he started, and where he returned after leaving Ford Motor Company in late 1947), but of course, the Lincoln Zephyrs (both generations), and the Lincoln Continentals (again, pretty much a "customized, sectioned Zephyr" with some all new bodywork) which he did in close consultation with Edsel Ford rank among the most beautiful cars in history.

However, I still will maintain that someone was going to come along, in the field of automotive styling, who would pull all the elements together, and force the engineers and production managers to think, really think about how a car should be packaged for look, then do their work within those parameters, rather than a car being simply an engineering exercise, implemented by production, with basically rudimentary body shells, fenders, running boards and the like attached. Certainly, the Classics upon which Dietrich, Darrin, Buehrig, and Saknoffsky, Derham, and so many others worked their magic was the finest, and final flowering of the "mechanical" car, while Earl, Hershey, Buehrig et al, began the era of the automobile as rolling sculpture.

I know we won't completely agree, but this has been fun.

Art Anderson

Mr. Anderson: I am now quoting you( Nowwhere in the rest of the planet were stylists yet creating the same rounded lines, the pontoon fenders, on on. I think that you may have overstated things alittle bit about GM styling in 1933).

Now talk about round lines and pontoon fenders, I think you should view the 1932 Delage D8 Speedster by Letourneur & Marchand, 1932 Maybach Zeppelin Limousine by Spohn, 1932 Chrysler Imperial CH Speedster custom built for Walter P.

Mr. Anderson your right this has been alot of fun. I tip my hat to you, you are very well versed about the designers of the time.

John F. Shireman

Gentlemen, thank you very much for offering a very good exchange of ideas on a very interesting subject. I think you both have some good points on the subject which I would like to address. First, I think it is fair to say Earl was the most SIGNIFICANT designer in automotive history in terms of his overall impact. I too think it can be debated that he was not exactly a design genius in terms of personal talent, in fact it was said he could not even draw well. But to compare him to a Gordon Buehrig, Dutch Darrin, or even Bob Gregorie is probably unfair to both parties. The best work of Buehrig and Darrin, and Dietrich, as stated, were in coachbuilt custom and semi-custom bodies to be built in small batches(the Clipper excepted). As such I think they could do more stylistically, and even though Buehrig had to deal with ACD's limited resources he could still be more daring than someone at GM. Gregorie's formidable creativity was handicapped by the workings of Ford in the thirties. Earl, on the other hand, had to deal with a far bigger picture than these other (probably better) designers, and his genius was in a far bigger picture way then their's. We know that Earl got credit for other people's work, and that he had a huge staff to "steal" from and abuse. But given the design climate of the mid twenties when he hired on, that large staff would never have happened if he were not able to show GM brass what design could do for them. Also, rather than producing a few individual designs, he had to take GM's pricing structure and build a unified design ladder from top to bottom that lasted in the public mind for over 60 years to come. The big picture of the annual model change for decades on end, the A,B,C body interchange plan, the step up in prestige tempting the customer up the ladder, and doing all this over 3 million cars a year is the testament to him, and there was so much going on that it was probably unrealistic to think Earl could oversee a design himself from 1930 on. Sure he was by all accounts a vain jerk with a giant ego, but he also pioneered a milestone of bringing samples of coachbuilt glamour to the common production car. I think the overrating may just be comparing apples and oranges in jobs and responsibilities. Thanks again for broaching the subject, Todd C

I don't want to jump too far into this without my life preserver, but one of the more notable things that Earl did was create the "Art & Colour" department at GM where the styling studios were located. It was the first time design, appearance, color and interior creation were all in one place with designers working together to create a cohesive whole as far as automobiles' appearance. No longer did the engineers create a chassis and front end and find somebody to put a body on it and blend the two. Instead, the designers were part of the project from the beginning, dictating the shapes that you could see and managing packaging so that the cars were much more attractive. As someone pointed out above, prior to this, most cars looked like boxes behind a hood, and they were all pretty much the same. But after this, style became just as important as engineering and GM realized that how a car looks can sell it just as well as how it is built or how it performs. In fact, I'd wager that they found that styling did more to sell cars than any engineering improvement ever could.

I'd also point out some of Earl's trend-setting designs, such as the 1934 Cadillac Aero Coupes, which pretty much set the standard for all 2-door vehicles made in America in the 1940s (my own '41 Century being one of them). The whole industry followed GM's lead with the fastback designs, and did for years. While I don't give Earl all the credit, I think his vision helped created the automobile we have today and the process that creates them.

I also think it is unfair to compare the work of custom body houses to Earl's mass-production requirements. In some ways, I think it is quite amazing what Earl was able to do within the confines of a large GM management heirarchy. A custom builder had no such limitations--their only limitation was the owner's wallet.

Just my $0.02.

Good points Matt. Your observation about the body vs. chassis engineering is true. In fact, we forget today that into the seventies GM held to the old practice that Fisher Body handled production of the body from the cowl back and the car divisions built the chassis AND the front fenders and sheetmetal, just like in the coachbuilt days. The thing with Earl is he made sure the front ends did not LOOK added on but everything was a unified design. Considering the GM divisional rivalries, unifying anything like this was no small feat. This gets us into Earl's (considerable) company politics and away from actual design talent, but I think in measuring his influence that is something one has to look at. After all, that corporate infighting was what got designs like the 1934 LaSalle into production where they would otherwise have stayed on the drawing board. And Matt, as you say, the Aero Coupe influenced 2dr design for over a decade and the Y job (if one likes it personally or not) was an influence for 15 years and more and it's appealing styling features led Buick to producing billions in profits for GM in the 1940s and 1950s, where in 1933-35 it was in danger of being discontinued. And the 1940 C Body and 1941 Cadillac? Probably the biggest step to unseat Packard as the luxury car leader, which produced and influenced profit and prestige for GM into the seventies. GM in the Earl years was truly where styling and profit met and interwove unlike any time before or since, and he was apparently the spark that made it happen, for lots of reasons. Todd C

Tod C: I hate to burst your ballon on the reason why Caddy unseated Packard in the 40's as the leader in the luxury car field. It sure wasn't the design by Earls design staff of the 40 c body or the 1941 Caddy,as being the biggest step, or the biggest reason.