2009 - January 21-24 / 31st Annual Winter National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) Meet will take place in Old Town, Florida. Richard will be representing the central theme "Harley Earl" of the event and literally thousands of enthusiastic Corvette participants attend this annual winter ritual on the outskirts of Orlando. 

2008 - September 10-13 /Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) chose Richard Earl as the closing keynote speaker for their 2008 national conference in Phoenix, Arizona; link below details speakers. The following endorsement letter is from Frank Tyneski (executive director of the IDSA) to COAST TO COAST Radio.

November 20, 2008

Greetings,

The late Harley Earl is a legend at General Motors and an American hero. Harley invented the concept car and engineered consumer demand/desire for modern automobiles like no other business leader. He also envisioned the need for smaller, fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels way back in the early 1950s.  Richard Earl (Harley Earl’s grandson) is an expert on Harley Earl and all things GM – past, present and future.

I had Richard speak at our national conference for Industrial Designers. He was smashing! In short, Richard Earl is the most provocative and educated and well-spoken person I know in the car industry.  I say this as a former design executive at GM.

Anyway, it would be my honor to connect you with Richard Earl. You’re listeners would adore him and I suspect he’d become a repeat guest. I can only describe Harley Earl’s story (as told by Richard Earl) as the “Seabiscuit” of the auto industry.  Perfect for the times we are in.

2008 - August 9-10 / Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, A "once-in-a-lifetime," nostalgic educational retrospective and exhibition of some thirty National and Styling Scholarship award winning models, as well as some thirty State & Regional Award winning models - never seen before by the public. See some exquisite examples of the top award winning 1/12 scale, "Dream Car" models made by Harley J Earl's Guildsmen. Richard will be a guest speaker on August 10, 2008; click link below for more info: 

Exhibit features the infamous 50's & 60' industrial arts program, called Fisher Body Design Contest / Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild (1930-1968)]. 1/12 scale, Model-rama "Dream Car" retrospective representative of the Harley J. Earl auto design era, with 18 top national scholarship winner's models; 12 styling scholarship winner's models; 16 Regional winner's models; and 14 state winner's models - for some 60 models total. Meet the winning Guildsmen and see their models; Many became professional auto designers; Participate in a public info & education (PI&E) program and join the discussions about this industrial arts movement, a.k.a. "automotive design."  

2008 - June 20-22 / Carlisle EventsÔ bills itself as "the world’s largest presenter of collector car, truck and motorcycle entertainment" and the All-GM Nationals weekend thrills thousands of enthusiastic fans. This East Coast extravaganza has religiously taken place for decades of time now and one of the weekend's attractions will be speaking presentations made by Richard Earl on one of America's most famous designs, the Buick Y-Job, which will be at the event. As many car savvy people know, Harley Earl's Y-Job is a one of America's national design treasures and is generally accepted as, "the world's first concept car." Click link, below, for info and event highlights:

2008 - Jan., 15-19 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona (America's Largest Car Collector Auction) in mid-January. On the block, Richard spoke to the large audience present and live SPEEDCHANNEL TV broadcast feed on, "magnitude of the motoramic masterpieces created by Harley Earl and the automotive design art form he originally introduced and how this one man's design legacy will impact future auto world."

2006 - Jan., 20-24 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. Richard was brought out to the B-J event to be the spokesperson/curator of the Harley Earl art form and also represent a couple of this designer's most famous motoramic masterpieces. Both times the Designer-Earl vehicles were on the block [the Motorama Show Car, "Bonneville Special" and the unique "Futurliner" transporter bus] Richard delivered his viewpoint to the audience as to why his grandfather was one of America's greatest contemporary artists and why his specially designed cars were so historically important and valuable and are "national design treasures." The thousands of enthusiastic live bidders, participants and SPEEDCHANNEL TV fans watching the Barrett-Jackson Auction certainly concurred, for these two works of art or "motoramic masterpieces" as Richard calls them, quickly sold for a combined total of over $6.8-million dollars in the next 20 minutes. "It happened fast, and each time I was right up there standing next to Craig Jackson when all the fireworks (crazy bidding frenzy) took place to buy rare works of art by Harley Earl."

While at this year's Barrett-Jackson event, Richard also played a TV personality role in the SPEED CHANNEL'S "On The Block" series which was a behind-the-scenes filming by this network of the 2006 Barrett-Jackson experience. Richard played no small part and was featured in four of the TV episodes of this popular SPEED CHANNEL show.  

Watch reel footage of how winning bidder fended off so many attacks to own work of art by Harley Earl

2005 - Jan., 25-29 / Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale, Arizona. Richard represented the seller of a one-of-a-kind custom designed creation by Harley Earl, the motoramic 1954 Oldsmobile F-88 masterpiece, which sold for a then record price of $3,200,000. Richard's poignant words, on the block right before the car was to be auctioned, to the audience sparked more intensity in a violent bidding war that ensued. It was a memorable moment in the world of motoramic masterpieces by Harley Earl.

2001-2004 - For a few years, Richard succeeded at rallying key car execs at GM in Detroit on their rich design history. Vocally presenting his research findings on the untold Harley Earl story to legions of McCann-Erickson advertising execs and Buick brand managers, Richard's idea went on to light a fire under a powerful new GM exec, Bob Lutz, and he fast-tracked the Harley Earl TV ad campaign into reality. "It was amazing, for GM is legendarily slow moving, but Bob Lutz quickly pushed this new idea through to align Buick's live spokesman, Tiger Woods, alongside Harley Earl in the all-new TV ads filmed by leading Hollywood director, Tony Scott," said Richard Earl who was acting as a consultant and who originally signed the legal contract, to start the ad campaign. Richard continued saying, "the agreement allowed GM's Buick brand, and their advertising agency McCann-Erickson, the legal right to use 'Harley Earl's name, likeness and image' for a 5-year period. Over $260,000 million dollars was spent on the Earl advertising campaign during its lifespan." 

On set making Harley Earl Buick TV ads, Hollywood director Tony Scott & Tiger Woods 

2001 - Wayne State University - Detroit, Michigan. Spoke and made a visual presentation in the Art Department on the new Official Harley Earl Website on America's Automotive Design Legacy. Discussed Designer-Earl 's impact in the worlds of art and design. 

1999- Kettering University - in Flint, Michigan. Made a visual presentation and spoke to upcoming art, design and engineering students on the Automobile Design profession's unique rise. Professor Richard Scharchburg, for which this university's archives are now named after, was an avid fan of Harley Earl and contracted the traveling Harley Earl Photo Exhibit to travel to Flint to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of this university’s extensive Automotive Archives collection.   

1999 General Motors Design - within the famous GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. After Chrysler, this traveling Harley Earl Photo Exhibit was displayed front-and-center inside GM Design so many designer/engineers could draw inspiration from Earl's works of art.

1997 Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum - Richard spoke to a renowned group of designers during a Knoll Design Symposium taking place at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. At this museum, he was also the curator to a Automotive Hollywood, A Tribute to Harley Earl photo exhibit which exclusively debuted during the design symposium. Afterwards, this museum quality photo exhibit was expanded and then traveled to other art and design centers. 

Richard at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1997 when GM Design brought LeSabre to the very first design exhibit displaying works of art by Harley J. Earl.

1997 A Potent Letter - Click image below to read letter from Noland Adams:

1995 Corvettes of Carlisle  - Carlisle, Pa. Richard was invited to be a dignitary at this event (largest Corvette Show in the World). Being his first time to attend "Corvettes of Carlisle," he represented Harley Earl being the, "Father of the Corvette."

1995 National Corvette Museum (NCM) Bowling Green, Ky. Richard also traveled to Bowling Green and attended many of this museum's "first year functions." Working to promote the new NCM that had just opened to the public in the summer of 1994, Richard traveled with NCM PR rep., Tammy Haddock, to Houston, Tx. At the Sam Houston Corvette Club event, Richard did one of his first speaking presentations on Early Corvette History in front of an enthusiastic audience of Vette fans.  

1995 - Malcohm Konner Chevrolet in Paramus, New Jersey. For the July 4th weekend, Corvette engineer, Zora Arkus Duntov, invited Richard Earl to come to this alluring Corvette Show. This is when Zora Duntov passed the baton to Richard because Zora fully understood in his mind that Harley J. Earl was the true, Father of the Corvette. This was Zora's way of showing respect to the proud papa of the Corvette World. Richard got to witness a big part of the Corvette Phenomena that day sitting alongside Zora signing autographs for Corvette fans. "Before this time, nobody had ever asked me to sign my moniker on account I was the grandson of the Corvette creator," said Richard "and I've never forgotten the moment. This was a big year for me and I quickly found out Harley Earl was a fantastic role model to a general American audience. Plus, many of the best moments I've ever experienced in my life have happened since 1995 when I started researching material for a biography on this rugged dynamic American icon. "