The reason GM’s cars stood out so much more than the No. 1 auto maker’s brand of the late-'20s (for ten years prior to this time, Henry Ford had pumped out millions of functional-based standard atrocities known as Model-Ts) had to do with the main character of Harley Earl’s story: “STYLE.” Styling Leadership changed GM's most important products of design and engineering, its cars. After which, this unique American corporation decided to hitch a ride on this man’s future vision projecting well beyond the 1930s. It didn't happen easily, but it did happen F A S T. For in a short period of time, in the decade leading up to WW II, Earl would go on to conquer designing all GM’s brands. 

Backed by Sloan, and the board of directors, these powerful leaders let Harley Earl loose to do damn near anything he wanted to inside GM. The historic press release, featured below, is part of a long list of newly dug up scholarly evidence - resuscitation of facts - supporting this thesis. Anyway, back when GM was gaining market share year after year...decade after decade, this company’s top cadre knew that the Styling Section was their golden goose and or vehicle to the vault. They also used the Styling Leadership business paradigm (yes, it was used as a "sales weapon") to capture sales leadership and gain a powerful head start over all their main competitors. So, keeping the innermost sanctum of GM Styling cloaked in a veil of secrecy was a necessary part of the plan and naturally Earl wished to stay silent too, on account he always wanted to keep his artistic immunity. Besides, back then, GM’s greatest leaders simply fell in step to marching behind this great new drumbeat of progress. High standards and quality came at a price, but Harley Earl's creating Detroit's dependency on design vaulted GM way out in front...and all the primary leaders were compliant to this new tact: 

“Beauty in cars depends on design, rather than on dollars.”

When you examine what's at the heart of Harley Earl's above quote, his revolutionary reasoning of "art with intent" was a more-modern and democratic form of individual expression that was truly at the core of what successfully sold GM's automobiles. It's too bad for leading execs at car companies today who don't fully understand or get behind what once made GM so powerful in the sales leadership department!

Along with the pace of the times…let’s examine the GM & Earl relationship further. One can quickly realize what was happening here was something all-together new in big business. A truly symbiotic relationship was born and the reason it’s perhaps so important relates to the epic size it has mushroomed into globally...going way beyond GM, Detroit and America over the last five decades. For example, look how the Chinese are completely caught up in this game now. For the last few years, the international auto show of Beijing has been displaying a vast array of one-of-a-kind custom dream cars that the major car manufacturers have rolled out. 

The following historic report proves a point on how truly great freethinking visions and or ideas first come from an individual’s mind, not some committee of thinkers. There’s only one modern American auto leader’s name to grace the most seminal press release in “dream car” history:

1956 PRESS RELEASE (notice  "OLDS F-88"  is No. 14 on this storied list)

GM shop order (SO) numbers for these one-of-a-kind masterpieces of engineering created by Designer-Earl:

What's really interesting about this '55 DETROIT FREE PRESS article below, is how it shows that most journalists hadn't gone real deep reporting on the particulars of  where and how the "dream car" invention came about in the first place. So, that's probably why Designer-Earl put out his seminal 1956 "dream car press release" by GM (that's featured above at this section) which had all the facts on the who, what, when and where this dramatic innovation began in automobile history. 

The meteoric rise of Harley Earl's fledgling Styling Section in the years before, during and after WW II mirrors that of the powerful accent made by the United States Air Force (U.S.A.F) within the exact same important time period in American history. This interesting parallel needs to be fleshed out more.