BOOK REVIEW: General Motors Styling 1927-1958: Genesis of the World's Largest Design Studios

General Motors Styling 1927-1958. By Tracy Powell

Book Review by Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel.com
Detroit Bureau

Until the late 20s automobiles were mostly utilitarian contraptions of varying sophistication with little consideration for aesthetic appeal. Only a very few visionaries saw this new conveyance as something worthy of embellishment. One of those who centered his world on making automobiles beautiful, artful and appealing became the patriarch of the automotive styling and design world, Harley Earl.

Who better to write and publish a book about Harley Earl and the essence of the pioneering organization called the GM Styling Section, originally formed as Art & Color Section, than Tracy Powell, editor and publisher of Automobile Quarterly, one of the most respected old car buff books out there. This 208-page colorful history is beautifully illustrated with more than 30 full color artist renderings, some never seen outside the GM archives.

A story told to me by one of the Fisher Body Craftman’s Guild contestants gives a good sense of the bigger-than-life Harley Earl. This design competition for youngsters from the late 30s until the late 50s was fertile recruiting grounds for GM designers. The annual awards ceremony would include dignitaries from the worlds of politics and entertainment as well as the auto design community. All the adult dignitaries would be seated on a dais above the rows of winning youngsters. Earl would specify that the dignitaries were to wear black tuxes because he would be there, seated stage center, in his flashy white tux. He liked to be the center of attention.

Chuck Jordon, GM vice president of design a couple of incumbents after Earl (’86 to ’92), offers in his forward to the book that, “the intriguing part of this story is how it all happened, who made it happen, and the human relationships while it was happening.” And that is the charm of Powell’s book. He has compiled the memories of many of the key actors in this classic automotive drama and fleshed out stories that we’ve not heard before. It becomes obvious with Powell’s eminently readable narrative that it was the people, the relationships, the politics and the times that surrounded Earl and the GM styling teams that make the story so important and so fascinating.

Powell explores how Harley Earl grew up in the automotive design business before anyone conceived of styling as an element in the creation of a car. In his teens and early 20s this stylish, creative and personable young man penned special car designs for the rich and famous in Hollywood. His astonishing talents were recognized by Alfred Sloan and the Fisher Brothers who brought Earl to Detroit to design a new car called LaSalle, a lesser sibling in the Cadillac lineup. The rest, as they say, is history – though I must say the inadequacy of that cliché is documented by this fascinating book.

I spent a great deal of time savoring this book, in between too many other projects. Picking it up and putting it down was not a problem. Stories featuring familiar names like Tom Mix, Eddie Rickenbacher, Vergil Exner, Gordon Buehrig, and Bill Mitchell are interspersed with less well-known names like John Lutz, Ralph Pew and Homer LaGassey, Jr. as Powell comprehensively follows this story.

And how about the cars? One of my all-time favorites is GM’s - that is Earl’s - first real concept car, the 1938 Buick Y-Job, so far ahead of its time that it knocked the socks off the automotive world and set the stage. You’ll read the story of how Harlow Curtise, head of Buick at the time, came to Earl and asked him first what kind of car he drove. Earls said a Cadillac. Curtise then asked him to design a Buick he would like to own. That unleashed Earls creative juices and began decades more of innovative, future-looking designs.

The flamboyant Mr. Earl‘s ideas, leadership, corporate political savvy and ability to see into the future of automobile design insured the success of the Styling section and the unquestioned dominance of GM in automobile design. You’ll read all about it in this book.

Author Powell asserts in the introduction, “it was not my intent to re-write history; rather, it was my humble gesture to celebrate one of America’s crowning achievements – that of the culmination of design and engineering high talent found within the world’s largest automobile company.”

Using the reminiscences of many of the people who were there and plenty of scholarly research he has told the story with obvious enthusiasm and sensitivity. Without being over-structured by a chronological format the book feels like a lovely multi-course meal we can browse through at our leisure.

Looking for a gift for your favorite car guy/gal or anyone with an aesthetic bent or an appreciation for industrial design, or even business history? This one will be appreciated.

Contact Powell House Publishing at powellhousepublishing.com.