GM's Harley Earl: Greatest car designer ever?

Earl's 1952 LeSabre was an engineering experiment, show car, promotional tool and his personal daily driver.

 Harley Earl was called "The DaVinci of Detroit" and the name was apt. Just like Leonardo, Earl was an artist, a designer, and a visionary, able to both see the future and mold it. His accomplishments in the automotive field are foundational. Earl founded the first styling studio in Detroit, promoted the use of full-sized clay models to envision future production cars, invented the concept car, introduced the first tailfins, wrap-around windshields, bubble-tops, and hardtop styling. Earl also took the lead in hiring women designers.

1955 Chevy with a Ferrari-inspired grill is considered one of Earl's best designs.

Earl's studio styled the '59 Chevrolet Impala at the peak of American car design's baroque era.

During a time when designers weren't constrained by fuel efficiency-enhancing aerodynamics and safety issues, they were free to approach car design as pure art. Our evolution to more functional car design means we'll never see the likes of Earl's dramatic sex machines again. His car designs were products of a time whose creative industry was only matched by its innocence.

At a time when America was bursting at its seams with optimism, Harley Earl expressed the country's spirit in bent metal sculptures that people drove to work.

Harley Earl poses at GM's Arizona proving grounds with jet turbine-powered Firebird dream cars.

Harly Earl inspired the other American carmakers to follow his "longer, lower, wider" aesthetic, and created the wildest auto shows ever seen, GM's Motoramas. 

Anyone who's ever admired a 1957 Chevy Bel Air has enjoyed Earl's work, which graced over 50 million cars during his 30 year career as chief of GM styling from 1928-58. A bigger-than-life character who stood 6'4" and weighed in at 235 lbs., Earl drove his designers hard to style Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Cadillac cars and GMC trucks while creating scores of futuristic dream cars for the Motorama shows. Many of Detroit's top designers, such as Chrysler's   Virgil Exner, apprenticed with Earl before becoming stars in their own rights.