Why has Detroit's Auto World Been Crookedly Cursed for Decades?

This is not a question that may be answered in one sentence, as the process which led to this demise began in 1958, when Harley Earl, the man behind the scenes, was conveniently deposed. Ever since then, Detroit's megaphone (especially the one at GM) ruined his American Automobile Design Legacy and other titanic engineering, business and marketing milestones. My inquiry which began as a curiosity well over 10 years ago, inspired by an affinity for the automobile design profession and admiration for a man who was unquestionably instrumental in “creating the central universe of what makes the modern auto industry tick today” revealed intrigue, conspiracy, and a chair-spinning silent coup which served as the catalyst triggering a new era: The beginning of the demise of GM. Let’s examine why GM has never let the business side of this corporation's untold Design Story leak out of Detroit. Instead GM's top financial treasury office administrators of the last fifty years served up an ongoing false and misleading legacy behind the founder of Detroit's Dependency on Design and Versailles of Industry, and subsequently went on to subvert and completely marginalize the essence behind his elaborate Art of Auto-making principles and how high-ranking his “automobile design equation” was to the long-term success of not only General Motors, but the whole global automotive economy. [Richard Earl May, 2007] 

Harley Earl would roll over in his grave if he were to witness where GM has gone in the last fifty years. But what would surely surprise him most is how GM's financial leaders over this timeframe completely got away with perpetuating a business swindle that not only hoodwinked millions of people, but the entire journalistic community, too. GM's financial leaders have been cooking GM's history books for decades of time and naturally this cooked GM's financial books. No doubt, later legal studies (probably by large GM stockholders like CalPERS) will draw up charges of corporate criminality against the current top leaders of GM who willingly orchestrated

Attractive logo style and the Design Dome auditorium below; both heralded Earl's vision.

During the height of the golden era of America's auto industry ---  the 1950s --- one journalist put it this way, “GM’s Harley Earl is located somewhere between God and the president, but without the latter’s limitations.” At this time, nobody understood this better than one of Earl's top protégés, William L. Mitchell. For back in 1956 he had become well aware of Harley Earl's Achilles heel and that's why Mitchell put a rebellious silent coup into action during GM's fiftieth anniversary year in 1958. Where does all this lead us today? The financial scope of human failure committed here is titanic in what has been lost regarding: market share, money, jobs, workers and residents of GM's factory towns, etc, etc...

It’s hard to believe the level of damage Mitchell did to Harley Earl’s perpetual dream, or vision, of future America. Like Earl, one man changed the course of auto history. But instead of Mitchell following Earl's positive direction of making & taking things, a rebellion by Mitchell caused dire long-term results (just one avenue Mitchell disastrously forged is featured below on the biggest trend of the last fifty years of auto making...the Small Car Trend which Harley started in America). For practically everything he would go on to touch, he tainted in his personal crusade to break down and hide what Earl had spent his entire Detroit career building up. Mitchell's main objective was to dizzily promote himself and simply have fun sitting in one of the industry's most influential  power positions going into the 1960s. At the time, Detroit was not only the "automobile design capital of the world" but the Motor City had the lock stock and barrel of the global automobile pie...by a long shot. 

After guys like Bill Mitchell, Jack Gordon (President) and Fred Donner (CEO) landed in the top spots of General Motors Corporation by 1958, they began to take GM and Detroit for a ride back to the dark ages of "chaos rules" standards of building motorcars and trucks once enforced by Henry Ford. The damage they caused spread out far and wide, and is to a large degree directly responsible for the "tear down" tactics Detroit's leading auto execs still use today to build modern vehicles. Let's not forget (and it's just one segment) the disastrous small cars Detroit put on dealer lots in the 1970s, like the Chevrolet Chevette and the Ford Pinto, for these poorly design-engineered vehicles would go on to define an era of product design quality coming out of America's auto capital well into the 1990s. 

The Original Goon Squad

Why did they do it? Remember, by the time these guys took control at GM, Harley Earl's automobile design section was credited with having created the auto industry's No. 1 reason for car sales. Smashing up Earl's legacy or throne of American auto design became the quickest vehicle to the vault at controlling the power behind GM's purse strings...the richest company, by far, in the world. Contrary to popular belief, the start of the decline of the American auto industry was very much premeditated. For Mitchell, Donner and Gordon very cleverly had GM's PR department spin everything (any negative business story on this company's poor performance or quality) thereafter to make it all seem crystal clear to the media and the public that all the ugly and bad things starting to unfold within Detroit at GM's headquarters, as well as what was coming off the factory's assembly lines, was simply accidental. This was entirely false and misleading. The truth of the matter is that starting in 1958, GM began spending hordes of money creating a ruse, and in the decades that followed, the amount has surely escalated to being in the 10s of millions of dollar range.  Again, the media and public has lapped up this smoke and mirrors deception from the very beginning...and that's why the same charade being orchestrated currently by GM's top execs today works so well while GM's market share, prestige and power still continues to tank 50 years later now in 2008. 

The 'Me' Generation 

During the early 1960s, when the Beatles got long hair, most young kids in America followed and the fact that other old fashioned people didn’t like it was an enormous part of its appeal. That concept (directed at Detroit’s old stodgy crowd) is exactly what Harley Earl used throughout his long and influential mid-century career in the Auto Capital – his car designs lit the fuse that gave two separate, very important, generations (1930-69) permission to dream. What people wanted to was become more modern, reinvent or shape the world and Earl was the first to enter our culture consciousness in a way that had never been done before. He was the one forging the trail in modern culture, and through him and his invention of the --- entire new 'car design' culture world --- it allowed people to say, “Yes, you can tackle it and go ahead in a new direction.” By the mid 50’s, his cool cars did something the next generation could never seem to do, all his designs and cars never set off a battle between the generations –  even bank presidents were thinking on the same lines as men like Elvis Presley. Everybody wanted Earl’s cars, whether for business like beauty or strictly for fantasy. It was an open-minded new modern way of freethinking.

All that change, all that was going on…Americans had the feeling at the end of the 50s, it was nice to know that much power, that big a sword, was in the right hands at GM. It was extraordinary for the people who actually knew what was going on. Harley Earl and a small group in Detroit were holding the flame for the whole modern world and right when he was going to take the automobile design profession, as an art, to a new height among critics, academics and ultimately fans—Bill Mitchell radically changed the course of automotive history. Instead of cultural expectance or having an enormous impact on the perception of others, Harley Earl’s auto work came to an abrupt halt.

Obtaining a “giant ego” in the position, Bill Mitchell ushered in a new concept towards living your life and his character taught the next generation of GM’s designers how to be. In a very direct way, Bill Mitchell began to break up, depose and spin Earl’s deeds around and mingle them in amid his own new GM designed cars (photo below shows Earl's major works cross-promoted with designs done by Mitchell). Mitchell's moral and ethical compass permitted acts of extreme selfishness and paying homage to others who came before you, was an idea he clearly rejected. It's another giant reason GM Design is so weak today in comparison to what it once was when Earl was leading the charge.

More visual deception; Mitchell knew exactly what he was doing in this late 1960's photo in the futuristic GM Styling Dome: Standing on Earl's shoulders trumpeting his version of the story...which was based on narrow self-interests. After all, if it wasn't for Earl's milestone cars featured above... like the Y-Job, LeSabre and Earl's legacy of Corvettes, Mitchell would have been a nobody in the auto world. Up to the day he died in 1988, Bill Mitchell used a well manufactured bodyguard of lies as his armor veil to greedily take all he could from America's auto world. Not surprisingly, most high-powered GM execs still use this "take, take, take" tact today. 

The Seventies hit Mitchell, GM Design and the rest of Motown's auto world hard. Unlike Earl, there was no longer a precise periscope used to forecast long-term design visions and/or trends. That's why the oil crises created so much pain for American car companies. They never cared to think that safety and environmental matters were a large part of what would dictate future design parameters. Shrinking GM became the order of the day.

Since almost everything about Harley Earl and his “inventing the auto design profession” began to be covered up and enshrouded in secrecy by Mitchell, he and the other top leaders of GM realized they could easily play a deceptive game reporting on Earl and GM’s formidable design legacy (most people don’t realize today that this was “America’s auto design legacy” too). As the Sixties passed, and Harley Earl died, Mitchell knew all too well that Earl’s family would never pose a threat. So, that’s when he and GM's other top leaders began ushering in an unpleasant new trend. Taking credit for another man’s work was a great way [especially by publicly talking up yourself] to acquire prestige and power in this industry. Mitchell saw how he had the best weapon off all in this new game since pinching the talented design work by Harley Earl proved extremely valuable to his rise. Having the upper hand, Mitchell rampantly used this tactic during the rest of his career.

Harley Earl’s wife, Sue, who outlived Mitchell by four years, said the following in 1988 on Mitchell's despicable behavior pertaining to why --- Harley Earl's name and his car design legacy --- became so publicly tarnished: 'Mitchell was an insufferable lout who after climbing into the position Harley created went on to ruin America's auto design legacy and set GM and Detroit back decades in time!" Sue Earl also passed on another seed of knowledge which directly pertains to why all the leaders of GM, after Harley Earl, were so adamant and have to this day remained so irreverent towards letting out all the facts on Earl's legacy of success, "How General Motors became No. 1 in the modern era, that's Harley Earl's story." 

This is the main reason America's auto world economy has become so depressed. If Harley Earl's leadership had never been compromised, Detroit's future would be a lot brighter. Finally, notice that GM's leaders taking this company into 2008 (100th anniversary year of GM) didn't even draw up a "Forward From 100 Logo." It's almost like they knew this company wasn't going to be in business later on!