The GM Design team shared a series of rare, little-known automotive sketches on social media this week, which were being stored in a scrapbook put together by the automaker’s former vice president of design, Harley Earl.
These sketches were shared on the GM Design Instagram page on Thursday and were completed by various automotive designers throughout the 1930s and 1940s. One of our personal favorites from this collection is of an early 1940s Cadillac Series 62, which was completed by celebrated designer Art Ross in mid-1937. Ross worked alongside Bill Mitchell during the design process of the first-generation Cadillac Series 62, who was recruited by Earl to work for GM’s Art and Color studio in 1935. Mitchell eventually replaced Earl as lead designer at GM in 1958 after he reached GM’s mandatory age of retirement at 65. As many readers of this site already know, Mitchell would go on to pen iconic designs for GM like the 1963 Buick Riviera and the Corvette Stingray Racer concept.
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GM Design says these sketches, which were kept in scrapbooks in Earl’s office, are now some of the earliest examples of design artwork in the GM Design Archive & Special Collections. Today’s automotive designers have all sorts of tools at their disposal when imagining new automobiles, from computer rendering software to life-sized clay sculptures and more, so it’s interesting to see how designers did their jobs when all they had was a pencil and a piece of paper. Despite the limited tools they had, the resulting sketches were still highly complex and intricate. There’s a reason today’s automotive designers look up to guys like Earl and Mitchell, after all.
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Comments
Just imagine what would have happened in the ’50s if the government had allowed weird headlamps.
Hey modern day GM design team take a look at these, this is skill, this is passion, this is talent. Imagine designing cars that have timeless, classic appeal. Maybe a look back at these design exercises maybe in order. You may learn a thing or two about car design. Imagine having like these designers “Respect”
Timeless, priceless concepts and creativity from a generation that worked with pen strokes and a sheet of paper.
Harley was into lowered cars and wanted Cadillac to make them low even putting on a stage show in 38 for the brass to prove his point. I agree
Harley Earl was the gold standard of auto designers and absolutely brilliant in his field. The only other designer of that age who was comparable was Preston Tucker. Today’s tin-plate designers don’t hold a candle to either one of them.
The trophy presented to the winner of the Daytona 500 is named in Harley Earl’s honor.
Today’s designers can only make straight lines. They wouldn’t know a French Curve if they saw one. They need a history lesson.
As we transfer over from ICE to EV powering ourselves down the road, car design is going to explode into new territory. Differences in packaging of power source and propellant storage between the two means that the old rules don’t necessarily apply to how cars of the future are designed. We are entering a world where we are going to see familiarity morph into new and uncharted territory. Those stylists who are able to grasp the new engineering efficiencies and be able to work them into their designs are who will lead the way. Whom I think will be the Harley Earls and Bill Mitchells of the future.