It was only in the late 1930s (after ol' Henry Ford succumbed) did Ford Motor Co. realize if they didn't bite the bullet, and follow the exact paradigm Designer-Earl had invented to transform all GM's products, Ford wouldn't be able to compete with GM's more advanced product designs. Even after Ford Motor Company's numerous pirating raids (offering rich incentives) to hire out Earl's Styling-designers out of GM, did Ford finally get on the right track. By relenting, Ford had to build and/or modernize a whole new engineering infrastructure, from the bottom up, that truly ran opposite the old pro-utilitarian ways [walls] Henry Ford had built-in to his company's business model from the beginning.

The Ford Design Department in Dearborn, Michigan as it looked in March 1939, above. As one can see, there are several full size clay models and styling bridges in the background and Ford's new styling department simply had all this going on in one room; body development studio, design layout tables and black board drawings. On the other hand GM Styling had individual departments with giant teams of players working on each one of these distinct area. 

As these photos (directly above and below) of Ford's design department in the 1950s illustrate, Ford Motor Co. was playing second fiddle to the GM/Earl enterprise where GM Styling technology for taking and measuring math-based engineering points off the body design were years ahead of Ford. 

Anyway, If a major American car maker didn't start using the Earl/GM technique (incorporate a auto design department inside a auto- maker's hierarchy) they were doomed to failure. Perhaps Harley Earl knew this better than any high priest of the auto world coming out of the gates of World War Two. That's why he and the the other top cadres of GM never publicly "talked up" their ace-in-the-hole of how significant the auto design profession was to being GM's keystone to the future. They all understood and knew if other car makers ignored the future...they well might not be in the car business very much longer. Numerous casualties ensued during the '50s and car companies like Hudson and Packard either entirely went under or had to merge with other auto manufacturers. 

The growth and achievements of America’s No. 1 auto company were made possible by a kind of continued spirit to seek change and progress freely that only prospers inside a democracy. General Motors is a piece of modern America, and in the eyes of many, an industrial enterprise closely linked to making this country ever knew, young, vigorous and great. So, naturally, there is a priceless inheritance behind what makes this company tick successfully today. As we approach this company’s 100^th anniversary in 2008, business people inside Detroit should be aware of what is at stake to keep this company strong long into the future. 

National Defense Program

After the European war began in 1939, Harley Earl broke from his secretive tradition and shared his body of knowledge with certain men high up in the U.S. military regarding GM building weaponry and all sorts of other products of "unheard of reliability." Unlike any other great engineer in Detroit at the time, Harley had proven his metal by becoming GM's top dog engineer and for creating GM's new trains which were a an amazing exploit of engineering dependability. 

After which, GM quickly got involved, in a big way, in wartime production. Moving into the 1940s, GM rapidly became the leader for wartime volume production and tooling up all of Detroit's production arsenal (sharing GM's new technology with it's competitors so they could all make quality mass produced war products...the GM way). And by the end of 1942, it became clear to certain powerful military leaders that who ever could "out-build" America's enemies with engineering might, was going to win the war. Designer-Earl's hybrid form of engineering would play a decisive factor in manufacturing a Pandora's box of advanced new weaponry for land, sea and air. 

Finally, Harley Earl's "Inventing A New Profession" played a major role in GM's gaining market share during the 1930s, 40s, 50s and '60s. Over all these years, GM has never wanted to share "Earl's story and/or engineering history." 

The point of making this above comparison is to show that General Motors could have never pushed the technological boundaries and gone on to achieve the "productive capacity" referred to in the 1956 newspaper story without first having the seed of Harley Earl's original invention. Basically, GM has been keeping this part (exactly how influential automobile design was to the modern strata of motor car building) of their corporate history a secret now for over 75 years!

Another way of looking at it is that Harley Earl always wanted future generations of Americans to know what he invented in the modern transportation/engineering world. But, on account of a multitude of reasons he never opened up, lectured or wrote a book on his more-modern technique of product design that revolutionized Motown and played a large part in making Detroit the world capital of engineering in the post world war two years.