Two decades after Henry Ford rolled out the Model T in 1908, American cars still looked like boxes on wheels.

That was before Harley Earl rolled into Detroit.

Earl arrived in 1927 from Los Angeles, where he worked for his dad customizing cars, recalls Earl's grandson Richard Earl on his Web site, carofthecentury.com.

Harley Earl was lured by General Motors (NYSE:GM - News) head Alfred Sloan, who saw that Americans had become affluent during the Roaring '20s and figured they would pay more for a symbol of wealth and status.

Earl seemed a perfect fit.

His job was to create custom cars for Hollywood stars. His first creation along those lines was a streamlined auto body for Fatty Arbuckle for $28,000, an enormous sum at the time. He also designed a custom body with a saddle on the hood for cowboy star Tom Mix, according to the Detroit News.

While Ford kept churning out functional, no-frills vehicles, Earl's goal was to lengthen, lower and widen cars to make them attractive.

His 1927 Buick LaSalle was a first step in that direction. It featured long, flowing fenders and two-tone paint.

The LaSalle was "a significant car in American automotive history" because it was the first designed by a stylist to achieve success, Sloan told the News.

Under Earl, GM quickly adopted new technologies and styles for its vehicles. Ford, by contrast, remained stagnant, pumping out reiterations of its monotone Model T.

As Henry Ford reputedly said, "The customer can have any color he wants so long as it's black," since black enamel was cheap, durable and quick-drying.

GM To The Fore

Design innovations helped General Motors race ahead of Ford. In 1927, GM introduced annual model changes to lure motorists into dealer showrooms to see the latest styles and gadgetry.

"The design of the car can be a persuasive tool for inducing car buyers to get rid of the old and buy the new," Earl said.

Meanwhile, banks and car companies made it easier to buy through the introduction of auto loans.

A year after the LaSalle's success, Earl was promoted to head the newly created Art and Colour Section, the first division of an American car company devoted solely to design. He quickly founded the GM Design and Styling Department.

Earl continued to innovate. He eliminated running boards, hid the spare tire and integrated the fenders, lights, grille and other components with the body.

He created the auto industry's first concept car, or dream car, as a way of test-marketing new designs.

The first such car, the 1938 Y job, was a long and sleek two-seater sports car that featured bumpers wrapped closely around the body. It was loaded with gadgets, including electric windows, hidden headlights and a power-operated convertible top.

The concept car "became a worldwide industry standard for ... getting public reaction, trying out new ideas of style and engineering and creating interest in automotive progress," carofthecentury.com reports.

The Y job was never produced, but it was way ahead of its time. It was the first car to have an electrically operated convertible top and power windows. These and other features, such as the wide chrome grille with vertical bars, appeared later in Buick and Cadillac production cars.

Earl also introduced quadruple headlights, aluminum wheels, turn signals, heated seats and curved windshield glass.

Before the concept cars were shown, they and their components were built in the design studio using clay, another Earl innovation. Cars had been modeled using wood and metal. But clay was more malleable and let stylists incorporate smooth, flowing lines in their designs.

World War II interrupted Earl's efforts, as many auto plants were converted for production of war materiel. He again unleashed his creativity after the war ended in 1945, as Americans exulted following a long period of self-denial that began with the Great Depression.

Earl's designs reflected that exuberance and, in the 1950s, took cues from the emerging space age. Tail fins, panoramic windshields and other designs evocative of jet fighters and rockets came into vogue. Chrome grilles and bumpers were other common features.

One of Earl's most famous concept cars was the 1951 Buick LeSabre. It sported big tail fins and a faux air intake that GM says offered a preview of the aircraft styling that followed in that decade.

Earl's vehicles are icons of American car design. They include the Chevy Bel Air models of the 1950s and the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, which featured soaring tail fins.

Earl tested them -- what many viewed as dream cars -- at GM's traveling Motorama Show, which toured big cities from 1953 to 1961.

Earl called Motorama -- the forerunner to the modern auto show -- a "new way of merchandizing." The shows attracted millions of people and boosted traffic at dealer showrooms nationwide.

"The dream car has become a world famous symbol of the American public's ever-growing fascination with the life it can expect in the future," GM said in 1956.

Perhaps the most famous of Earl's concept cars displayed at Motorama was the Corvette. Introduced in 1953, it featured a fiberglass body and tinted windows and is regarded as America's first true sports car.

Earl continued to pushed the design envelope, incorporating keyless entry technology, power radio antennas and Oscar, the first crash-test dummy.

By the time he retired in 1959, GM's share of the U.S. market had ballooned to more than 40%, a mark it held for years. His design studio had grown to 1,100 staffers from just 50 at its inception. Earl's "talent was to result in actively influencing the appearance of more than 50 million automobiles from the late 1920s to 1960," Sloan said.

In L.A. Gear

Earl was born in 1893 in a section of Los Angeles that later became Hollywood. He attended Stanford University before joining his father's custom car business.

Earl was as colorful as the cars he designed. At 6 feet 4 inches, he often sported light blue suits, a snap-brim fedora and two-tone shoes.

Oldsmobile designer Richard Teague told the Detroit News that employees always called their boss Mr. Earl. "He demanded respect and he got it. All us young guys were afraid of him. He kind of scared everybody half to death, but he was still a terrific guy," Teague said.

Earl's success prompted GM's competitors to establish their own design studios. At the time of his death at age 75 following a stroke in 1969, the design departments of all four Detroit carmakers -- GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors -- were headed by Earl protégés.

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Copyright (c)  1996 Investors Business Daily, All rights reserved.

Investor's Business Daily - Leaders & Success (01/25/96)

Auto Designer Harley Earl -  He Created Look Of GM's Glory Days, Tailfins And All

By Paul A. Eisenstein

Even the competition called him ''Mister Earl,'' a title bearing both respect and fear. Few men have ever left such a visible stamp on the world in which they worked as the auto industry's first styling ''superstar.'' The late Harley Earl of General Motors Corp. transformed the running board into the fin. He made cars longer and lower and splashed them with a liberal dose of chrome. In the process, Mister Earl established himself as a potentate with virtual veto power over the world's largest automaker.

''His legacy still exists,'' said Carl Olsen, head of automotive design at Detroit's Center for Creative Studies.  ''The structure of the design studios as they exist at almost every auto company in the world today is a direct legacy of Harley Earl.''

Born in Los Angeles, Earl was the son of a carriage maker. In the 1920s, the brash young designer's own sense of showmanship found him a following among Hollywood's glitterati. He designed the sleek $28,000 body for Fatty Arbuckle's Pierce Arrow. And he put a saddle on the hood for Western star Tom Mix.

While the celebrities of the day competed to come up with the most ostentatious coachwork, the average American motorist had to settle for something far less flamboyant. The best-selling car of the day was the Model T which, as Henry Ford was wont to say, could be bought in any color, as long as it was black.

Earl's work drew the interest of Alfred Sloan, GM's guiding genius. Sloan saw an opportunity to break Ford's grip on the market by focusing on styling rather than cost. The strategy worked. By the mid-30s, GM was No. 1 in the marketplace.

Earl's first GM assignment - and his first big hit - was the luxurious 1927 LaSalle. It was the first mass market model to be completely designed, from headlights to rear bumper, by a stylist. Three years later, Earl set up the industry's first styling department. By the time he retired in 1958 (he died in 1969), the fiefdom had grown from a staff of 50 to 1,100.

By then, Earl seldom put pencil to paper, Olsen said. But that didn't matter. ''He had the vocabulary to express what he wanted. And he usually got it.''

By tradition, Detroit's engineers held ultimate sway over the products the industry built. But Earl refused to accept the back seat. GM's engineers found themselves working to fit their engines and suspensions inside the designs that spilled from Earl's vaunted Design Staff.

''He demanded respect and he got it,'' recalled Earl protege Richard L. Teague, later head of design at American Motors Corp. ''All us young guys were afraid of him. He kind of scared everybody half to death, but he was still a terrific guy. He didn't laugh much and only smiled occasionally.''

Earl's designs certainly brought smiles to the motoring public. He was nothing if not innovative. He eliminated the outside spare tire and the running board. He introduced the two-tone paint job and the two-seat Corvette sports car, the first production vehicle with a fiberglass body.

Earl's Buick ''Y-Job'' was considered the first modern concept car, boasting such firsts as the electrically operated convertible top and power windows.

But his most memorable - and controversial - styling statement grew out of ''his love of aircraft,'' Olsen recalled. It emerged in the 1948 Cadillac in the form of tailfins. Over the next decade, fins grew larger and more garish, reflecting Earl's equal affection for chrome.

Once, GM's modeling department mistakenly mounted two separate sets of trim on a prototype for Earl's approval. The 1950 Oldsmobile went into production with both of them.

''My primary purpose has been to lengthen and lower the American automobile, as times and reality and always at least in appearance,'' Earl said shortly before his retirement. ''Why? Because my sense of proportion tells me that oblongs are more attractive than squares, just as a ranch house is more attractive than a square, three-story, flat-roofed house or a greyhound is more graceful than an English bulldog.''

Earl's successor, William Mitchell, maintained GM's design dominance until the late 1970s. Crippled by a pair of oil shocks and stung by the success of new Japanese and European competitors, GM struggled to reinvent itself. It rushed to downsize, launching a wave of more fuel-efficient products, but they were vehicles that lacked any sense of style.

The automaker reached an embarrassing low point when four of its midsize sedans wound up on the cover of Fortune magazine, identical but for their small divisional ''badges.''

In the interim, GM's domestic competitors, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp., have moved to fill the vacuum. And in the process, they have steadily nicked away at GM's market share.

Over the past four years, GM has been going through a series of internal changes. The design staff no longer stands supreme. GM's stylists are now supposed to work with their engineering counterparts on ''customer-focused'' teams.

The process seems to be working. Critics suggest GM's newest models are becoming bolder and more distinctive. And in the process, the automaker's market share appears to be stabilizing.

But GM has a long way to go before it can reclaim the glory, the excess or the success of Harley Earl.