Harley Earl - General Motors

General Motors

Earl Automotive Works was bought by Cadillac dealer Don Lee, who kept Harley Earl as director of its custom body shop.

Lawrence P. Fisher, general manager of the Cadillac division, was visiting Cadillac dealers and distributors around the country, including Lee. Fisher met Earl at Lee's dealership and observed him at work. Fisher, whose automotive career began with coachbuilder Fisher Body, was impressed with Earl's designs and methods, including the use of modeling clay to develop the forms of his designs.

Fisher commissioned Earl to design the 1927 LaSalle for Cadillac's companion marque. The success of the LaSalle convinced General Motors president Alfred P. Sloan to create the Art and Colour Section of General Motors, and to name Earl as its first director.

Prior to the establishment of the Art and Colour Section, American automobile manufacturers did not assign any great importance to the appearance of automobile bodies. Volume manufacturers built bodies designed by engineers guided only by functionality and cost. Many luxury-car manufacturers, including GM, did not make bodies at all, opting instead to ship chassis assemblies to a coachbuilder of the buyer's choice.

The executives at General Motors at the time, including engineers, division heads, and sales executives, viewed Earl's conceptual ideas as flamboyant and unfounded. Earl struggled to legitimize his design approach against the tradition- and production-oriented executives. As head of the newly formed Art and Colour Section in 1927, he was initially referred to as one of the "pretty picture boys", and his Design Studio as being the "Beauty Parlor".

In 1937, the Art and Colour Section was renamed the Styling Section. Sloan eventually promoted Earl all the way to the vice president level, making him (to Sloan's knowledge) the first styling person to be a VP at a large corporation.

Harley Earl and Alfred P. Sloan implemented "Dynamic Obsolescence" (essentially synonymous with planned obsolescence) and the "Annual Model Change" (tying model identity to a specific year) to further position design as an engine for the company's product success. These ideas are largely taken for granted today but were unusual at the time.