Harley Earl's Bold Cars Reflected A Strong America

First off, we want to thank individual design/engineering leaders such as Steve Jobs of Apple and BMW's global design head from 1992-2009, Chris Bangle, for reigniting Harley Earl's original playbook over the last eight years to become their dominant sales weapon towards scoring major victories in business success at the outset of the twenty-first century at dramatically expanding each of their company's positions in market share and annual profits.  

Simply put, Harley Earl's product designs stoked the flames of the American economy on a colossal scale and others like him today (Jobs and Bangle) are not even in the same league. Ever the showman, Harley Earl gave the American audience a slice-of-the-future like no modern business man has ever done before in the history of launching new manufactured product designs. This design pioneer often liked to remind people that, "appearance and function are of parallel importance" in selling automobiles and his unique lexicon became the ultimate game changer in the modern business world! Read on to find out more on this simple to understand business success story.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, introduced new versions of the company’s Macbook Pro and Macbook portable computers. Jobs gave his audience of about 100 reporters, analysts and bloggers in a small auditorium on Apple’s campus a tutorial on manufacturing and industrial design.

The following commencement speech quote is from 1965 when the business leader, Harley Earl, was receiving an honorary doctorate degree from Pratt Institute college in Brooklyn, NY:

"He led the way to industry-wide recognition that appearance and function are of parallel importance. When Harley Earl entered GM, he entered an alien world where financial men and engineers were reluctant to trust the decisions of an artist. However, Mr. Alfred Sloan, his sponsor at GM, helped him establish management-level acceptance of the industrial designer as a participant in determination of policy. Earl’s knowledge of engineering and production methods played no small part in General Motors’ ascent to a position of industrial leadership."

Today, design engineers like Jobs and Bangle are standing on the shoulders of a great American industrial leader because in all honesty their respective companies completely follow the exact visual design prestige and the annual model change marketing and merchandizing paradigm Harley Earl originally founded in the American business world long ago. Just as it was instituted and legitimized by General Motors in the modern business world, Earl was first to conceive of lavish annual introductions for his company's new transportation product designs (mainly automobiles) every year. Naturally, Harley Earl's business inventions had a great deal to do with why GM once reined so supreme. 

For well over fifty years now, in terms of numbers and finance, the design of the automobile has been the leading sector of commerce in the entire industrial design community. Since Harley Earl pioneered Detroit’s industry or business of designing cars in the first place, he had his own philosophy of industrial design. Creating "Detroit's Dependency on Design" was Earl's highest order and this business leader kept his personal philosophies on this matter close to the vest and never ever published them. Why? Because Earl knew if he'd ever relinquished this body-of-knowledge, he'd be letting out General Motors’ most valuable trade secret of the 20th Century: The revolutionary new business of "Automobile Design" cemented GM as the No. 1 car company in the world for decades of time.

You think Apple's manufactured product designs are at the forefront of some new fangled concept at WOWING a world-wide audience on a large scale in the business world today? Think again, for Harley Earl had millions more people back during the mid-twentieth-century years buying his ultra-modern and highly sophisticated designed products. Absolutely, Steve Jobs and/or Apple's product designs should be measured up against those of another success story in the history of the modern business world so a general American audience can clearly see who was the bigger "individual design" sales leader. Remember, today's GM has nothing to do with this enterprising story. Even 50-years ago, when the U.S. population was approximately 160 million people, Earl's design statement -- especially in numbers and finance -- towers shoulders above what business leaders such as Apple's Steve Jobs and Chris Bangle of BMW are doing now at the outset of the 21st Century.

The above 60 MINUTES news story from October 2006 titled, GM's Difficult Road Ahead, captures GM Vice Chairman, Bob Lutz clearly admitting how General Motors is completely managed the wrong way today, "by financial leaders." Because of this fact it is no wonder why GM's stock price recently traded down under $2.00 a share! Click above to see Lutz saying exactly why the American auto industry was run so successfully fifty years ago, "During the parade of GM's greatness in the 50s and 60s Design ruled and the finance people ran behind to reestablish order and pick up the pieces. We've just lost the focus on Design." 

On October 16, 2008 Don Hammonds of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote this insightful newspaper article, click above, and this news story provides proof positive that instead of notebook computers which are low ticket consumer items, Harley Earl introduced millions of high ticket GM automobiles made in America. To this day, it's still nationally known "that buying an automobile is the second most important purchase a consumer will make to buying a home in this country." 

Example below shows Harley Earl introducing a new product design in 1951; LeSabre, like the Apple Macbook, was originally fashioned and/or made out of aluminum, too. 

Detroit's Cars Today Reflect a Weak America

America's cars today are emblematic of Detroit's leaders who lowered the standards, skirted accountability issues and never wanted to stand 100% behind their work! You might as well get used to the "new economy" we live in going into 2009 because we probably are no where near coming out of what's going to be a long protracted depressed business cycle of weakness in the U.S. of A. Why? Namely because of what stands behind the bold title above. In essences, America's most recent business practice (obviously it really got out of hand in the last decade) let a bunch of pathetic managerial flunkies entirely wreck our American auto-making world over the last 30 odd years. So, its wistful thinking that big business is just going to perk up and turn around on a dime. Remember, Detroit's primary leaders, as of recently, are cut from the exact same moronic Wall Street financial cloth that screwed up our business world legacy for everyone in this country moving forward. Essentially, millions of Americans have just inherited a miserable business legacy of incompetent and unprecedented failure on a titanic scale. 

Be mindful that once the Dow Jones Industrial high was established in 1929, this leading economic indicator didn't finally break through the this index's high level until 1954! That's right, it took 25 years! Is "human nature" in this country any different than in the decade leading up to the financial debacle of the 1929 capitulation in the stock market and Main Street USA?

The visceral photograph, further down, shows the intense delight and drama of Americans playing out on the streets of mid-town Manhattan, NY who wanted to all get a sneak-peek at Harley Earl's Motorama Show Cars at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. The picture only illustrates part of the crowd, for the lines wrapped around the block.