Notice the headline, shown below, of a 10-page article on Detroit and its No. 1 form of industry from this LIFE issue. 

October 23, 1939 LIFE 

We use this feature article as a case study to establish how Harley Earl was already one-giant-step ahead of the rest of the traditional Detroit engineers of the day. What made this maverick car architect so different, is that he never said publicly how he was "the trailblazing pioneer leading Detroit's engineering world forward." Instead, he used his strong vision to silently revolutionize the auto engineering world...and chose to do things in harmony with how GM's other leaders wanted him to explode his "car design" juggernaut inside this company. Using the fashion of evolutionary, instead of revolutionary. So, Earl never publicly announced his complicated new "functional styling" process! The truth of the matter is he could have written a book at the time on how his new production method was radically battling and stomping out the old ways which Henry Ford instituted, but...if he had, this tact would have alerted all of his company's major competitors into finding out more about GM's new golden goose technology:

“In every field functional styling is work and ideas and men and minds. It’s the spirited adaptation of form to action. That’s no nine dollar phrase spawned by artists to give engineers the jerks and board members the jitters. Functional styling is the hard-headed scientific synthesis of advanced ideas derived from the moods and trends of progressing years. And it is all combined with the down-to-earth realities of engineering.

GM Styling achieves this synthesis through the practical rendering of every new development in three-dimensional scale form using production materials and methods.”

With the benefit of hindsight, take a look at what is addressed below in the color pictures that kick off this article. One can clearly see Earl's pre-engineering form was already being used to create the product designs of all GM's vehicles coming off their factory's assembly lines. Again, this unusual maverick kept the best part of GM's new production method secretive.  

Most other Detroit engineers, Chrysler's main ones are pictured below in this same article with Earl, didn't have a clue GM's top leaders were already using his advanced "styling leadership" rules and principles of pre-engineering GM's cars ahead of time. That's why this car company GM had began to rapidly outpace Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. during the 1930s. This California car architect had clearly made GM's other powerful leaders see the light on how come his new technology was a paradigm-busting shift away from the old fashioned ways of how Henry Ford body styled and engineered his cars. Earl just quickly got the point across how GM's new team could totally render Detroit's other major auto maker's products [and body building methodology] obsolete. Again, GM never publicly released information on this new trade secret that had quickly become GM's No. 1 sword of power to vault them far out ahead of their competitors! 

Pictures from the kick off of this 1939 article show Detroit's finest engineers. What's going on in these three shots tells a little behind-the-scenes narrative. For example, Carl Breer, shown above, has a small model of the "Airflow" on his desk, and he certainly was a strong proponent of this car's creation. What's wrong with this picture though? Well, by 1939 the Chrysler Airflow had been discontinued, having proven to be an enormous sales flop and or corporate embarrassment because the American public had deemed it  over-streamlined and downright ugly. So, what kind of a metaphor does that sent out to others...we at Chrysler like trumpeting our biggest losers?

Then you got this new kind of car engineer "Earl Harley"...(LIFE didn't print his name correctly...and no doubt Harley cared the least) who's clearly pioneering off on some new track. That's because, at this time, he had already gotten GM to heavily invest in going down a whole new road in auto building whereby this auto maker's cars were entirely created differently than those product designs of Chrysler and Ford Motor Company. Earl was using a revolutionary new technology he alone invented: Math-Based Clay Modeling. And, not surprisingly, it is another one of this car architect's advanced production methods [and or milestones] still being used today by all worldwide auto makers to achieve success!

" DETROIT, It Changed the World's Pattern of Life and is Now the Fourth City In the Land " - 1939 -

Obviously, somewhere between 1939 and 2005, something went horribly wrong with the direction the American auto industry went in.  Today, Detroit is afar from being "the fourth city in the land" like it was when it was the featured title of this 66-year old LIFE magazine article.

As a matter of fact, the way things are shaping up right now, the Motor City and its Big Three's leaders, will be lucky if Detroit even registers in the Top 50 cities in America by 2010. What's so defective here has everything to with how auto execs perceive modern auto history. For example, legions of Detroit's finest and highest paid auto execs don't even know that Motown was, and to a large degree still remain, "the Automotive Design Capital of the World." So, if most of GM's leaders don't even know this simple fact...how can they even covet this very body of knowledge? Again, that's the real problem...these auto execs still don't get it how much this business is rooted to the tradition of what Harley Earl created in first place: DETROIT'S DEPENDENCY ON DESIGN. 

That's because the 'old boy network'  running things at the beginning of the 21st century are from the selfsame model of players like Roger Smith. Who, as most savvy auto minded people know today was one of the most self-serving ex-GM CEOs that literally annihilated the heart behind what made GM great in the modern age: Styling! Starting in the early 1980s, Smith and his minions - all of whom had about as much style as an Amish wardrobe -  butchered GM and and Detroit and blazed a trail of destruction. One of which was making GM's modern history incomprehensible to auto journalists, historians and especially the American public! This way they would not be held accountable for their misdeeds. So, is it really any wonder why one of America's greatest companies of the last hundred years is presently being steered down such a disastrous course...GM and Detroit need reverse the curse sooner rather than later.