VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Harley Earl?

With all the marketing efforts going on right now by GM bringing ol' Harley back, I was just wondering if any of you guys know of any Chevys other than the '32, and the Corvette (or at least the concept - I think), that Harley was the principal designer? I know I could just order a book from Amazon, and/or go to the library, I just thought it might be fun to throw this question out there. Thanks guys!

For starters, GM is promoting Harley Earl in their Buick advertisements. They have not used his image for any Chevrolet promotion to date.



Harley Earl was born in Hollywood, California in November of 1893. After attending Stanford for a while he left to work at his father's custom design studio. In 1927 he joined GM as the head of their new art & color design studio. He was GM's first official "design chief."

He introduced clay modeling to the design process, as well as using "concept cars" to gauge consumer and engineer interest in new designs.

He most well known for his theory of car design: 'Wider, lower, longer."

He designed the 1927 and 1934 LaSalle (think Cadillac for all you newbies), possibly two of GM's most grand cars.

He designed the infamous Buick "Y job", the 1950 Buick LeSabre and was a big advocate of sleek, smooth lines, where curves dominated design.

Ever heard of "GM Motorama" ? Yup, chalk that up to Earl's credit too.

Other accomplishments include the 1953 Vette. He was the king of Chrome, the master of the fin; introducing to the world the1948 Cadallac (with the famous fin design making a world debut).

By the time he retired in 1959 he had grown the design team from 50 at GM to over 1000. He had directly supervised the design of over 35,000,000 GM cars.

He died in 1969...and talk to anyone at GM Design studios and you'll hear the phrase:

"Our father which art in design, Harley be thy name."

- James

I would like to know if Thomas Hibbard had any influence on the styling of 1931 and 1932 Chevrolets. To me a 1929 Chevrolet does not look much like the prototypes designed by Hibbard & Darrin. But 1931 and 1932 Chevrolets have body mouldings and window offsets typical of Hibbard & Darrin designs.
H & D of Paris France became Fernandez & Darrin in 1930 and I read that Tom Hibbard was working for GM in 1933. Maybe some of you GM and Chevrolet historians in Michigan have some info on this connection.

Thank you all for supplying all the information! I love hearing the subjects and the responses-Thank You!--
In this case the answer has not yet been supplied--Did Harley participate in the design of the 32? If so all styles? Thank you again. Paul

d2d2,

I'm stepping into an area that I have little, if any, knowledge and I sometimes feel you know the answer before you ask the question, but briefly, here's what I learned from surfing around "Google."

In 1920, Thomas Hibbard and Ray Dietrich formed a company called LaBaron. Early on they did design work for Packard and others. No mention of General Motors.

In 1925 Labaron was sold to Briggs. I didn't learn at what point Hibbard went on to Paris and joined up with Dutch Darrin (known as Hibbard & Darrin) but the implication was that it occured at the time of the sale because the article stated that Dietrich stayed on with Labaron (sub company of Briggs) which went on to do design work for Packard, General Motors ('32 Cadillac) and Chrysler (1940 Thunderbolt). Maybe it was the Dietrich influence from the old Hibbard/Dietrich team that allowed their design influence to sneak into the 31/32 Chevrolet designs via the Cadillac design. It's a known fact that Designers like to "borrow" from one another and once the sketches were delivered to GM, who knows what happened in the then Harley Earle Studio?

FYI, LeBaron did design work for Duesenberg too.

Okay, so I missed Duesenberg!

James, I believe that if you check a little more you will find that the sign in the GM Design Center reads "Our Father who art in Design - Harley Be Thy Name " :)

That's right. I was typing while thinking about the origina of the phrase and didn't notice I put in the wrong word.

I'll modify my post...so it reads correctly!

"Those Americans in Paris, Tom Hibbard and Howard 'Dutch' Darrin, were given an assignment for several one-offs on GM cars, including a Chevrolet sedan which was shipped to the States sometime during '28. Dutch Darrin remembers receiving a handsome retainer for all this, and find 'traces' of Hibbard & Darrin influence in the '29 Chevrolet. There were also, courtesy of Harley Earl, traces of the LaSalle, which in turn had sported traces of Hispano-Suiza."
Beverly Rae Kimes in Automobile Quarterly, vol. 19 #1, page 59.

d2d2,

I was right, you were just testing us!