Harley E. holding a prototype of an underarm aerosol deodorant for the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA).
On entering Harley Earl Inc. people looked at a client roster board, left, that read like a “who’s who” of American industry.
Manufacturers who were giants in their particular fields turned to GM's design czar, Harley Earl, to style some of their most important products...products of immense diversity.
That's why, in 1945, Mr. E established his independent design firm outside of General Motors and a decade later located this unique company across the street from the GM Tech Center.
Design Capital
“Detroit is the design capital of the U.S.A.," wrote founding editor of Industrial Design (I.D.) magazine, Jane Thompson (formerly Mitarachi), when summing things up in her editorial for the Oct. '55 issue; mag's cover story reads, "Design In Detroit – a special report on design in a major industrial center." Articles inside this issue boiled down on how Harley Earl created Detroit's Dependency on Design and how this new juggernaut was directly impacting the national economy year-in-and-year-out. Many top journalists and leaders in and outside the worlds of design and automobiles in the ‘50s and ‘60s knew a about these realities.
The flames of the U.S. auto capital along with the design legacy of GM were both burning low at the beginning of the 21st Century. But, after 2009's bottom the spirit and influence of Detroit's winning heritage began to turn and rise up. Former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz drove the point home during a candid CBS 60 Minutes TV interview in 2006 saying,
"During the parade of GM’s greatness in the 50s and 60s, design ruled and the finance people ran behind to try and reestablish order and pick up the pieces. We just lost the focus on design." Lutz also acknowledges to CBS's Steve Kroft, "that GM became complacent over the years producing too many anonymous cars with uninspired designs and delegating the design process too low in the corporate structure."
This type of honest and soulful declaration coming from a top GM leader, to a major "investigative journalist" on prime time TV, on the current condition of GM's powerful Car Design legacy was a pivotal moment. Why? For a leading GM exec hadn't gone out on a limb (for Design) in over 40-years. The announcement showed that GM could, and actually would, change moving forward.
Basically, if GM starts promoting "Design" much higher up in the company's corporate structure they can get on the right path again. After which, America’s largest auto maker would reap the benefits – sending out the right signal/message to savvy consumers and the global business audience how, "although we (GM) lost our design edge for some time, we've clearly got it back and intend to use it from now on to create cutting edge design and excellent engineered products."
There’s a logical tie-in between H. J. Earl’s modern design adage, “Appearance and Function are of Parallel Importance” and C. E. Wilson’s famous ’50s quote, “What’s Good for General Motors is Good For America.”