The General Motors product-policy program of 1921 emphasized "the very great importance of style in selling." But it was not until 1926, when closed bodies were becoming dominant, that I first turned to the problem of styling in a practical way. The appearance of the closed car at that time left much to be desired. The period of automobile elegance during the early days of the motorcar, when cars were, in effect, handmade and reflected the design of the carriage, was already far past and almost forgotten. The mature open car was all but obsolete. The new closed car was a high, ungainly contraption, with narrow doors and a belt line (that is, the line between the windows and the lower part of the body) high above the already high hoods. General Motors' closed cars of 1926, for example, were 70 to 75 inches or more high, as compared with 51 to 57 inches in 1963, and since the bodies did not overlap the frame, they were very narrow—65 to 71 inches in 1926 compared with over-all widths of about 80 inches in the 1964 models. They were well made but their height was not attractive. And as cars were driven more rapidly by more efficient motors, it became dangerous to have vehicles with their center of gravity so far above the ground.
The awkwardness of these cars came in part from the nature of the design process. There were then generally two completely separate operations, one for the production of the car body, and the other for the production of the chassis, including some of the parts of the car that contributed to its appearance. In General Motors at that time the car divisions designed and built the chassis as a separate unit complete with cowl, fenders, running boards, and hood. Fisher Body then designed and built a body with doors, windows, seats, and roof, which also was assembled separately. Then the body was installed on the chassis. The final appearance of the cars reflected the independence of the two operations.
I expressed my general views about the need to develop a styling program on July 8, 1926, in a letter to H. H. Bassett, general manager of Buick:
My dear Harry:—
. . . [For] The first Cadillac car that I ever had ... I purchased small wire wheels in order to get the car down nearer the ground and I never could see why, as motor car people, we have apparently been so loath to do a thing which contributed probably more to the appearance of the car from the attractive standpoint than any other single thing. Chrysler, in bringing out his original car, certainly capitalized that idea to the fullest possible extent and I think a great deal of his success . . . was due to that single thing. Slowly but surely we are . . . getting our cars down nearer the ground . . . This, of course, is to a certain extent a mechanical feature but nevertheless it involves the appearance as well.
I am sure we all realize . . . how much appearance has to do with sales; with all cars fairly good mechanically it is a dominating proposition and in a product such as ours where the individual appeal is so great, it means a tremendous influence on our future prosperity. When it comes to our body design, I am sure we all recognize the quality, the wonderful workmanship and the constructiveness from every standpoint of Fisher bodies. They speak for themselves . . .
Irrespective of all this, however, the question arises—Are we as advanced from the standpoint of beauty of design, harmony of lines, attractiveness of color schemes and general contour of the whole piece of apparatus as we are in the soundness of workmanship and the other elements of a more mechanical nature? That is the point I am raising and I believe it is a very fundamental one . . .
At the present time one of our very important lines is being revamped from the appearance standpoint . . .
The action I mentioned in the last line of this letter was to make styling history. Lawrence P. Fisher, who was then general manager of Cadillac, shared with me a belief in the importance of appearance. He had been visiting some of the dealers and distributors around the country, among them Don Lee of Los Angeles, California. Don Lee owned, in conjunction with his sales operation, a custom body shop in which he built special bodies on both foreign and American chassis for Hollywood movie stars and wealthy people of California. Mr. Fisher was impressed with the styling of these California cars and paid a visit to the shop where custom bodies were built. There he met their young chief designer and the director of the custom body shop, Harley J. Earl.
Harley Earl, the son of a carriage maker, had studied at Stanford; he had received training in his father's carriage shop, which Don Lee subsequently purchased. He was doing things in a way that Mr. Fisher had never seen before. For one thing he was using modeling clay to develop the forms of various automobile components, instead of the then conventional wood models and hand-hammered metal parts used in development work. Also he was designing the complete automobile, shaping the body, hood, fenders, headlights, and running boards and blending them together into a good-looking whole. This, too, was a novel technique. Mr. Fisher saw Mr. Earl lengthen the wheel base by cutting the frame and inserting an extra piece. The result was a long, low custom body that pleased many famous screen personalities.
It was an important meeting, for Mr. Fisher's interest in this young man's talent was to result in actively influencing the appearance of more than fifty million automobiles from the late 1920s to i960. Mr. Fisher invited Mr. Earl to come east to Detroit and work for him at the Cadillac Division. Mr. Fisher had a particular project in mind: that of designing a quality car of the same family as Cadillac but somewhat lower priced. We felt that there was a growing market for a car of this type. The idea was to approach the design with a new concept in mind: that of unifying the various parts of the car from the standpoint of appearance, of rounding off sharp corners, and of lowering the silhouette. We wanted a production automobile that was as beautiful as the custom cars of the period.
Harley Earl came to Detroit under special contract as a consultant to Mr. Fisher and the Cadillac Division in early 1926. He worked with Cadillac body engineers on the design of the new car. This was the car, then in the design stage, that I referred to in my letter to Mr. Bassett. The car, named the La Salle, made a sensational debut in March 1927, and it was a significant car in American automotive history. The La Salle was the first stylist's car to achieve success in mass production. The effectiveness of the new design can be seen by comparing it with the 1926 Buick sedan. The La Salle looked longer and lower; the "Flying Wing" fenders were drawn deeper than their predecessors; side windows had been reproportioned; the belt line had a new type of molding; sharp corners had been rounded off, and other design details were added giving it the unified appearance that we were looking for.
I was so impressed with Mr. Earl's work that I decided to obtain the advantages of his talent for other General Motors car divisions. On June 23, 1927, I took up with the Executive Committee a plan to establish a special department to study the question of art and color combinations in General Motors products. Fifty persons would make up the department, ten of them designers, and the rest shop workers and clerical and administrative assistants. I invited Mr. Earl to head this new staff department, which we called the Art and Color Section. Mr. Earl's duties were to direct general production body design and to conduct research-and-development programs in special car designs. The section was made a part of the corporation's general staff organization, even though it received its funds through the Fisher Body Division. I was concerned about how the divisions would take to the new department, and felt that Mr. Earl needed all the support and prestige that Mr. Fisher, the Cadillac Division manager, could give him. Furthermore, as chief executive officer of the corporation, I lent Mr. Earl my personal support. He has recalled to me that, when he started his staff work for the corporation at large, I said to him, "Harley, I think you had better work just for me for a while till I see how they take you." With the support of Mr. Fisher and myself, the new section, I hoped, would be accepted by the car divisions.
One of the first problems Mr. Earl had to deal with was to find the staff of designers called for in the plan. There were automotive stylists in the business in 1927; for example, Ray Dietrich and Ralph Roberts of Le Baron, Inc.,
of New York City, who in the late twenties were engaged respectively by the Murray Corporation of America and the Briggs Manufacturing Company. There were also R. P. Williams and Richard Burke of the Locomobile Company, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and others. But there was no going profession from which to draw young men adept in advanced automobile design.
Shortly after the Art and Color Section was established, Mr. Fisher and Mr. Earl went on a tour of Europe to study European car design. A good many European cars then were better, mechanically and in appearance, than American cars; but of course they were made in relatively small numbers. It struck me that our new section might be improved by the addition of foreign designers. I wrote Mr. Fisher on September 9, 1927, suggesting he consider that possibility:
In view of the fact that you and Harley Earl are going abroad, would it not be a constructive thing to try to get in touch with men on the other side who could contribute ideas that would be helpful in our art and color work. This may, at the first consideration, seem impractical because I recognize the different viewpoints and all that sort of thing. On the other hand, as I see it, the great problem of the future is to have our cars different from each other and different from year to year. Recognizing the extraordinary talent that Harley Earl has along these lines, it must be recognized [also] that even with that fact before us, all the additional talent that we can get will be needed in view of the tremendous possibilities and the magnitude of our operations . . .
From time to time Mr. Earl brought car designers from Europe to his studio in Detroit. At the same time he developed over the years a school of American car designers. The problems of designing a foreign car and an American family car are quite different. The European car usually has little or no trunk space and has seats for two or four people. The economics are different too. Horsepower taxes and high gasoline taxes have caused European car design to go toward smaller engines and greater gas economy. The big market in America wants a larger and more powerful engine, and room for several passengers and enough luggage for a long-mileage motor trip. These basic differences in utility cause the difference in appearance between the European and American car designs.
Despite the public acceptance of the La Salle in 1927, acceptance of the new Art and Color Section within the corporation was slow. An automobile stylist is an advocate of change to a degree that was at first somewhat startling to production and engineering executives. The Sales Section also had its fears. Wouldn't the cars begin to look alike? On December 5, 1927, B. G. Koether, director of the Sales Section, wrote: "Several people have expressed the fear that if the art and color end of our business would be dominated by one personality, it might possibly be that in the future all General Motors cars would more or less resemble each other ..." I replied to Mr. Koether as follows:
. . . The exact working out of the new set up [Art and Color Section] is not yet completed, but if I have my way and I shall influence a program so far as I can that provides an organization having artistic ability and while it may be dominated from the operating standpoint by one individual, it will have in its organization a sufficient number of individuals to develop a diversity of ideas. Formerly, the one individual had no appreciation of the importance of having things different. Mr. Earl has a very keen appreciation of that phase of his problem and recognizes that it will be impossible for him to revise eight or nine lines of cars every year and have them continually better, more artistic and yet different— at least he cannot do that by himself. It is also our idea to include in the activities of this Section, color and upholstery. Much has been left undone ... in the past.
Still, in addition to the above, it is my idea to have the divisions set up more or less of a duplicate organization on a smaller scale, of course, in order that a competitive situation may at all times be maintained . . .
This divisional approach was tried but did not prove practical. But we maintained the divisional separateness by setting up a different studio in the Styling Staff for each of the divisions.
Sales, however, were in the end the decisive factor in the acceptance of the Art and Color Section. The market made it clear that appearance was selling cars. Chrysler was getting good results with color, and so were we wherever we used it. Furthermore the year we started the Art and Color Section, 1927, was the year in which the Model T Ford came to the end of its career. This was the car that, according to legend, Mr. Ford said one could have in any color so long as it was black. Thus styling came into the picture as one era ended and another began.
On September 26, 1927, 1 wrote to William A. Fisher, then president of Fisher Body Corporation:
To sum up, I think that the future of General Motors will be measured by the attractiveness that we put in the bodies from the standpoint of luxury of appointment, the degree to which they please the eye, both in contour and in color scheme, also the degree to which we are able to make them different from competition.
The hesitation within the corporation to make use of the "beauty parlor," as the Art and Color Section was sometimes called, was gradually overcome. Its first job outside the Cadillac organization was a "face lift" on the 1928 Chevrolet for O. E. Hunt, who assisted in establishing the authority of the Art and Color Section within the corporation.
The first car to be styled completely by the Art and Color Section was a tremendous flop from the public standpoint. This was the 1929 Buick, introduced in July 1928 and soon dubbed by the public "the pregnant Buick." Into that car went some of the most advanced engineering seen in any production car of the day. Low sales figures for the year 1929 indicate that this particular design was not accepted, and the car was taken out of production as soon as a suitable replacement design could be developed. The controversial feature of the design was a slight bulge or roll just below the belt line, which started at the hood and continued around the entire car. By actual measurement, this curvature extended one and a quarter inches from the side of the belt line. The failure of its appeal indicates that taste is related to a particular period. In modern cars we tolerate a bulge of three to five and a half inches. The "pregnant Buick" of 1929 is a classic example of how the public generally prefers gradual rather than drastic changes of design.
Mr. Earl had an artist's explanation of this event. He said in 1954:
... I designed the 1929 Buick with a slight roundness both ways from the beltline highlight, and it went into production. Unfortunately the factory, for operational reasons, pulled the side panels in at the bottom more than the design called for. In addition, five inches were added in vertical height, with the result that the arc I had plotted was pulled out of shape in two directions, the highlight line was unpleasantly located, and the effect was bulgy.
The Styling Section then had not been as well integrated into other company operations as it is now, and I was unaware of what had happened until I later saw the completed cars. Of course, I roared like a Ventura sea lion, but it was too late to keep car buyers from having a lot of fun naming the poor enceinte Buick.
For a long while the Art and Color Section occupied quarters in the General Motors Building Annex in Detroit. The focal point of the work area was the blackboard room. To this room came executives from Fisher Body and every car division. Executives mingled with designers, engineers, woodworkers, clay modelers; they were an active, talkative crowd, always comparing and pointing to the designs on the blackboards, which, surrounded by black velvet curtains, made the white body lines stand out sharply.
In this stimulating atmosphere in the early 1930s you might see gathered together Mr. Knudsen of Chevrolet, Alfred R. Glancy or Irving J. Reuter of Oakland (now Pontiac), Dan S. Eddins of Oldsmobile, or Edward T. Strong of Buick, Mr. Fisher of Cadillac, and perhaps one or two of his brothers from Fisher Body.
We were all window-shoppers in the Art and Color "sales" rooms. Art and Color was proposing new designs, presenting new idea sketches, selling progress. And as time went by more and more of these ideas appeared to be feasible. New divisional cust
omers materialized as more and more people in the corporation bought the ideas. Furthermore, we employed women as automobile designers, to express the woman's point of view. We were the first to do so, I believe, and today we have the largest number of them in the industry.
One of the main problems of Harley Earl and his section was to fix upon certain lines of development for car styling. If one had a conception of how automobile styling would or should evolve, small successive changes could be made year after year, as the annual model program demanded; consumers could be prepared, by measured steps, for more radical changes in styling, and it would be possible to avoid such mistakes as the 1929 Buick, or the error of Chrysler in 1934, when it came out with a car (the Airflow design) that was overly streamlined.
Harley Earl had no doubts as to what the main line of development in car styling should be. He said in 1954: "My primary purpose for twenty-eight years has been to lengthen and lower the American automobile, at times in reality and always at least in appearance. Why? Because my sense of proportion tells me that oblongs are more attractive than squares . . ."
Contributing to this main line of styling development was a secondary line—to integrate projections from the car into die body. Almost all the major achievements of Mr. Earl and his Styling Section in the thirty-five years since it was established have contributed to tins styling evolution. In the 1930s I renamed the Art and Color Section the Styling Section. In the terminology of the automobile business, model appearance is now generally called "styling," and the designers are "stylists ."
The 1933 models presented the first of the so-called A-bodies for Chevrolet, and introduced some significant developments. The body was extended in all directions in an attempt to cover some of the ugly projections and exposed parts of the chassis which were still in evidence. The gas tank was covered with what the stylists called a "beaver tail." The radiator was hidden behind a grille. The traditional exterior visor had been removed in the 1932 models and replaced by a curved windshield header, and in the 1933 models the height of the apron—the panel between the bottom of the doors and the running board—which was nothing more than a cover-up for the frame, was reduced. The final touch was to add fender skirts, which helped hide the encrustations under the fender.
My Years With General Motors Page 33