"GROWING" STOPS FOR AUTOMOBILES

Is it really any surprise the leaders of General Motors along with the rest of Detroit’s top execs over the last 50-odd years withheld most all of the historically innovative records from the media and public on Harley Earl's inventions? If you read about this deception, clearly chronicled below, you'll see why the playing field of America’s auto capital is so crooked today.

In a New York Daily Mirror interview, January 25, 1954, the writer addressed Harley Earl's forward vision on building smaller cars for GM in the future: "To designer Earl automobiles are now as big as they're ever going to be. They may become a little smaller outside, bigger inside, and easier to get in and-out of. The shape of the car to come will result from evolutionary, not revolutionary changes, like an atomic powered auto. [Note Earl's words in bold below; this maxim is the No. 1 rule today being used by foreign auto makers!].

"Atomic power is a long ways down the road," he said. "But the bigger the dream, the further ahead we look, and we look at everything. The design for the car of tomorrow will emphasize economy, fewer handles and knobs, more glass, less weight and, for making autos more agile at lower speeds.

"Maybe the experimental XP-21 Firebird [was the first in a series of three that was introduced at the New York Motorama in January, 1954] with its economical running engine holds the answers? The first jet plane," said Earl, "could only fly for a minute or so. Now they cross over the Atlantic. Answers are stubborn things. But if you don't start something you never find them. At least we have a gas turbine engine in a car."

Notice date, shown above, when these experimental pictures were taken at GM Tech Center (Styling Auditorium Courtyard).

The historical research and pictures chronicled here provide a surprisingly clear metaphor of the road or direction the auto pioneer Harley Earl wanted to take GM down moving into the 1960s: Building Smaller, More Compact Cars. Leading up to his departure from GM in the last quarter of 1958, this innovator pushed hard so the next generation of leaders could endorse and meet the challenge/demands of what many young American consumers wanted to drive going into the sixties. Instead of being warmly greeted like he had always been in the past 30-odd years when introducing his concepts on forward vision and long-term planning to other leaders of  the corporation, Earl was met by a formidable wall of opposition. Essentially, a group of younger ultra conservative administrative leaders believed they could do it better now on their own... 

Try and conceptualize what Detroit would be like today if Harley Earl's last big vision or triumph had not been upset? 

For example, in mid-1957 Mr. Earl had a GM Photographic’s lens-men photograph these foreign competitor’s small cars intermingled with GM’s newest small car line inside the GM Styling/Design viewing courtyard (Earl just introduced the ultra modern two seated "Corvette" in 1953). Harley Earl's hybrid design engineers – male and female – are shown with respective small compact cars they own; VW Bugs & Karmann Ghias, MGs, Triumphs, etc...

These truth-telling photos were taken for business, not amusement, reasons. Clearly, it was 15-years before a very big trend began, whereby foreign auto-company rivals would start taking huge bites out of Detroit’s market share pie! 

The following information relating to Bill Mitchell probes into the heart of the matter on why Toyota (yes, this is the factual story that's all about 'auto design' supremacy) just surpassed General Motors in April of 2007 to become the No. 1 automaker in the world. GM had held this formidable position, uninterrupted, for over 75 years! 

How did Bill Mitchell actually attain the position from Harley Earl to become GM’s second vice-president of Styling/Design? This never before told story is actually a chair-spinning scandal having more to do with a silent coup rather than the legendary misinformation package of news stories that GM’s PR department originally targeted and fed to the media and the American public to swallow beginning in the late 1950s. Contrary to popular belief, Earl did not just hand over the reins of his power to Bill Mitchell in 1958 as many properly placed national news stories described. At the time, this position was the most influential one to behold in Detroit’s auto world. These four primary reasons prove --- in numbers and finance --- how the 'auto design' profession that Harley J. Earl first pioneered in Detroit's auto world was behind the long-term success of GM:

•    By the mid-1950s, the automobile design profession had become the No. 1 reason for car sales and was therefore responsible for cementing GM near a 50% market share level for decades of time.

•    Earl created a design monopoly and because of all the secrecy issues, General Motors has never let the business side of this story escape out of Detroit on exactly how high-ranking 'the auto design equation' is to every car company within the modern auto world economy. Mitchell was the one man mainly responsible for starting the campaign to subvert and thus convolute the meteoric design legacy Earl had founded inside GM. 

•    Irvin W. Rybicki perhaps painted the best picture why so many people today don't know about Harley Earl. Mr. Rybicki was a 42-year GM veteran who worked under Earl and, later on, became the third vice president of GM Design (1977-1986). His statements were gathered in various taped interviews:  

"Harley Earl is responsible for more than half of GM's greatest 20th Century milestones. The fact this company had exclusivity of all his work and was able to capitalize off his artistic efforts and innovative engineering ideas first, is perhaps why this man's story is so controversial and a kept secret today in Detroit."

•    Many people today choose to ignore the facts already set up in the annuals of auto history, one of which is the reality behind how Earl is credited for single-handedly taking the global automotive industry into the design business. 

Isn’t it strange that this rather influential "story on 20^th century business success" has never been properly chronicled in any kind of news story. Thank Bill Mitchell. In any event, when anyone examines this 1963 color photo of Mitchell, shown above, parading with sixty Corvettes outside the GM Styling building headquarters in Warren, Michigan most people immediately think it is some tribute photo to Earl and the success of the Corvette and Detroit’s newfound victory of being the "auto design capital of the world." Wrong. Truth be told, Mitchell impressively lined up all these Corvettes outside GM's futuristic Styling headquarters building to primarily show off his giant ego and iron-fist control he had achieved after ousting Earl. To Mitchell, this picture signified how high he was towering over every other executive inside General Motors and Detroit’s auto world. The secret to understanding this visual metaphor is clearly displayed in the picture. Notice and compare this photo to the other ones Earl had a GM lensman take back in 1957 (all the black & white shots displayed above) and see, on closer examination, that Mitchell banned any women from participating in what was supposed to be an inspiring photo-op representing the future of Detroit’s auto world.

Although esoteric to some, the meaning behind this picture shows the direction Mitchell planned to take GM and this company’s designs into the future…backwards, not forwards. Mitchell hated women designers on his team…whereas Earl, a few short years before, boldly embraced having them on his team and knew GM's "Damsels of Design" as he called them were the wave of the future. The other thing Mitchell detested, along with most other stodgy GM execs...was Earl's future concept of GM building line ups of small cars, millions of them, for all GM's different car divisions. Yes, millions more of Harley Earl's car designs. Mitchell and the other, much younger, leaders were sick of Earl and the power he had so they took him out of the equation. And what ended up happening because of this? By the time Mitchell retired in 1977 GM’s awkward car designs were not only bloated beyond huge, but GM Design was in a frenzied shambles in comparison to when Earl was relinquished from his position back in November of 1958. Of course GM never let out any truth telling press releases on how Bill Mitchell had become Earl's biggest detractor. That’s because there was so much money ridding on GM’s future designs and in reality, what Mitchell did during his rein of power controlling GM’s design arm, would go on to set this company and Detroit’s auto world back decades in time. 

Instead of telling the truth, this extremely powerful American company just deceived the press and the public by hiding and spinning things in a way no one would ever understand, or care about, regarding GM's modern history! Essentially, General Motors Corporation never wanted to share the secret ingredients behind it's illuminating success story on how this company became the world's largest global brand --- because of DESIGN --- and was transformed --- because of DESIGN ---  in the modern era by a brilliant artist/engineer impresario who originally came to Detroit from Hollywood, California. GM had traditionally become the world's largest "car design" manufacturer based on annual sales way back in 1931. The "tradition" part of this story had to do with how Harley Earl added a whole new component to how GM would build all its millions of modern cars and trucks into the 21st century...each and every one of them came to life via the innovative new "math based auto design production method" Earl introduced. Furthermore, GM does not want anyone to understand this company's DESIGN history or the story behind the POWER OF DESIGN because it is so dark and mysterious...and points to what's really wrong inside Detroit's auto world today.

For the misguided auto design ideology Mitchell set forth in motion (GM's most illuminating modern history related to its design legacy) would go on to radically affect all GM’s designers and engineers over the next generation going into the 1980s and 1990s. For example, everyone knows the facts on this legendary story related to how bad the car and truck designs were that came out of Motown during this time period. By this time GM's design legacy was leaving town...F A S T! Even to this day, the design trend and/or GM design legacy Mitchell ushered in is still responsible for all of GM’s car and truck designs often being perceived in the media and by the general American consumer these days as being second rate behind foreign brands. Not to mention, the fact Detroit and the American auto industry are in a horrendous state now in 2007. And because of all this, GM's market share has been plummeting for decades of time. Again, the last thing GM wants any media members or American consumers to figure out is how come they screwed up their design legacy so bad.

Again, the telltale pictures shown here at this section do not tell lies. This slice of Harley Earl's legacy provides another vivid paper trail of hard evidence the media and the public has never seen or heard before – the story GM’s past leaders (really culminating with the capitulation Roger Smith (GM's infamous CEO of the 1980s) put into motion that almost bankrupted this company by the early 1990s) were able to keep this blunder under wraps in history. After all, since H. J. Earl had the original idea for GM to run with the “American small car” theme long before it became enormously successful, do you think the men who chose to go down the wrong path on something like this would ever admit the oversight, or come clean on a mistake that ended up costing the Motor City trillions of dollars in lost revenues as well as setting back the entire American auto industry leading into the 21st century? Not a chance. What mainly ended up blossoming in Japan, Germany and Korea should have been born in Detroit’s backyard. [We're going to skip over all the current issues relating to what it means when millions of consumers are paying between $2 to $3 dollars a gallon for gasoline right now.] 

Because of herd mentality, and really after the lifeblood began hemorrhaging from GM, many other American auto companies in and of the Detroit region began following the leader (GM)…loosing money, prestige, brand strength and of course the ever-important market share. Starting in the 1960s the Motor City’s slide would go on to last decades of time; so, of course the city of Detroit fell prey and became perhaps its greatest victim from these ambivalent auto exec's battle cry, "we don't build small cars in Detroit." Naturally, the self-centered men responsible for the debacle made sure to disguise and confuse the real reason, which was, they were no longer hungry and had no vision or plan for continued progress for America’s auto industry or Detroit’s future. 

So, saying and using the racial conflict (’67 Riots) as a scapegoat for Detroit’s impetus to spiral downward was an easy bandwagon to ride and help the media throw fire on. These spin-doctor’s trickery worked well, for most journalists along with the public bought exactly what they wanted them to swallow. And sadly, to this day, most people still don’t know the true side of the story—how leaders of the largest corporation in the world gave away one of America’s crown jewels (the small car trend) by simply turning down Harley Earl's last triumphant vision. This trend became the next “big” thing, and it's still running strong over fifty years later now...

Conclusion: Remember the quote (at the top of this section in the New York Mirror) whereby Harley Earl reveals his giant vision, "The design for the car of tomorrow will emphasize economy...." also look at the Christian Science Monitor news story from 1956, below, addressing another direction Detroit's top auto innovator was blazing. The caption is on another one of Earl's important experimental vehicles, the XP-500, and says this car "uses virtually any type of fuel from peanut oil to whale oil."  

There's another great quote from this article below: "Showmanship -- where does that sort of thing fit into industry? It's the faculty of dramatization, of translating the technical in the understandable, of taking industry out of the realm of monotonous figures [what Henry Ford did] into the field of entertainment. It is a modern method for bringing the manufacturer close to the buyer of his products." 

Was Harlow Curtice really the biggest showman in American industry during 1956? Well, in reality, the creator of the Motorama Show and the XP-500 is a much more likely contender. By the mid-1950s, all of GM's top leaders were riding on the giant wave of success created by the automobile design profession.

Or click the forward arrow below to read more on how the cars of tomorrow will emphasize economy.