“Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit”, by William Knoedelseder

 

320 pages, Harper Business, ISBN-13: 978-0062289070

If you’ve never heard of Harley Earl – and damn you to Hell forever and ever if you haven’t – than you have at least heard of his many, many innovations to the automotive sciences. As told by William Knoedelseder in Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit, Earl was responsible for the creation that we moderns just take for granted (like so much), such as, well:

• Motorama Shows – First introduced in 1953, the Motorama was the groundbreaking precursor to today’s modern auto shows, and a staple of post war American pop culture
• The Concept Car – A brilliant marketing and merchandizing device for all global car makers today, concept cars boost general interest in the auto industry, exponentially increase auto sales and car show attendance, and enabled manufacturers to test and gage consumer reactions to new style and engineering ideas
• Women Car Designers – A powerful advocate of women's rights, Harley's hiring of the first prominent all-female design team in America's business world was groundbreaking, controversial, and extremely successful
• Tailfins – Outrageous and wildly popular, Earl’s tailfins are an instantly recognizable icon synonymous with one of the most beloved decades in American history, the 1950s
• Corvette – One of the 20^th Century’s greatest untold stories is the true genesis of the Corvette and Harley Earl’s role as its visionary designer and inventor
• Clay Modeling and Graphic Engineering – Using artistic techniques to help build and engineer cars, while industry standard today, was revolutionary technology when first introduced by Harley Earl, and two of his most influential methods were clay modeling and graphic engineering
• Interior Design and Color Studio – By employing some 75 interior designers, color stylists, fabric and plastic experts, and other craftsmen within a brand new Design Building at the GM Technical Center, Earl introduced the very first modern Interior Design section of any car company
• Annual Model Change – Harley Earl and GM’s mid-century dream team of business leaders initiated a modern tradition of recognizing and anticipating an automotive buyer’s wants and needs, something from which creating regular changes in design and style naturally evolved
• Invented the Car Designer – Before Harley Earl, the auto design profession wasn’t on the business map, but he was the industrial pioneer who revolutionarily merged art, science and engineering in the auto world
• The Modern Automobile – Fathering the modern car may seem like a grandiose claim until you add up the features Earl invented and imagined: first autonomous cars, onboard computers, telescopic power radio antennas, heated seats, tinted glass, electric windows, keyless entry, power convertible and pillarless tops, hidden spare tires, turn indicators, crash test dummies

I could go on and on and on…but don’t worry, I won’t. In Knoedelseder’s telling, Earl was much more than a giant of a man – at 6’5” he would be hard to miss anywhere he went – he was positively volcanic, both in his temperament and his creativity. But there was so much more to the man, too, such the fact that he was mildly dyslectic, or spoke with a stutter, or invented his own lexigraphy to tell his designers what he wanted, once telling an assistant that he wanted a car “to have a dooflunky, to come across, have a little hook in it, and then do a little rashoom or a zong”. Oh. Okay.

Having cut his teeth designing cars for the Hollywood elite such – his client list included Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Tom Mix and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle – he was hired by General Motor’s Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering as a special consultant and arrived in time to assist GM in the design of its 1927 LaSalle – only to become GM’s first head of design and rule dictatorially over the size, shape and look of all their vehicles for the next three decades. While I wish that Fins had more photos than it does (Google got a workout as I sought out all of the cars described therein), I found the book to be enlightening and entertaining, and not a little depressing, describing how it does when Detroit put the world on wheels and everybody wanted to live here.