Superficial Success.

I have to ask, if you un-stitch the plain label of your shirt and replace it with a designer label, does that make it worth more money suddenly? Do you all of a sudden become more sophisticated with a worldly wisdom of style? I myself hardly would think so; despite some young people if anywhere even in our class. And if you apply the same concept to a car in terms of it's surface appeal, body design and trim aesthetics, does that really change what's "underneath the hood"? People in Europe and dare I say Japan, would resoundingly say NO: and I'd be inclined to agree with them. Only some people in America at this time would profess to not agreeing with this point of view, however if the general masses care more about the aesthetic look of a car rather than it's "meat and bones", who are we to deny them what they want? Shamefully the continental masses at that time seemed only to care about the surface: and judged the book by it's cover. In terms of business this Harley Earl was remarkably clever, but if you are passionate about cars from the inside-out in terms of quality inside and outside, he's nothing more than a "design thug".

In the early 1920s, General Motors' success was launched out of Ford's inability to keep a pulse of what the public wanted. As Shales mentioned in one of our lectures paraphrasing Henry Ford when he was talking about the model-T: "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." What came of this stagnate stale repetitive aspect of the model-T Ford car was inevitably boredom. The same kind of boredom from having Kraft Macaroni and Cheese every night for dinner for the next 20 years; if you could imagine that. American people were surrounded by mechanical repetitive industrial work everyday, and needed something to help them feel better about life: if anything to help them feel different about their lives by having something that made them feel special. Understandably, at the very least, they needed a change. And in this particular sense, I can't blame them in desiring this, for diversity is what makes life much more interesting. So along comes GM with Alfred Sloan discovering that you really don't need to make the automobile more better in terms of performance and innovation, you just need to change the appearance to make it more pretty. It worked. Sales of GM cars started to soar whilst the stubborn Ford's car sales plummeted.

Alfred Sloan hired Harley Earl, who's background was growing up around people who made vehicles for movie sets. In order to create an illusion of progress to customers they would camouflage the cars they made by interchanging parts with different models or with higher end models every year. In a sense, Harley created this situation of leaving the customers in "the horse and the carrot" scenario: constantly leading them on to buy newer cars each year or two, or to trade in their old cars just as frequently. GM didn't initially focus on better car design from that point onward, they just focused on better car ornamentation. And the consumers loved it.

There was definitely infighting between the engineers and aesthetic designers at GM. I suspect it was initially out of fear of change: seemingly born out of human nature to fear what either side didn't know. Harley Earl was not the benevolent type to work with or under for that matter. Indeed there was understandably conflicts with the engineers, who were stuck and lazy in their ways to make a car, and who didn't want to have to think or redesign. Aside from that, Harley used bullying tactics, intimidation and going above heads to get more control of the Art and Color division at GM and to give it more power over the engineers and section chiefs. Many times he resorted to personal backstabbing and politics to get where he got and to get the Art and Color section the power it needed to have it's way. Despite claims to him having a good design sense, he never actually designed a car exterior: he'd take credit for his cowering staff to do it for him.

We see a similar practice today in some automotive companies. Underneath that lovely Volkswagen New Beetle is a Golf chassis. Yet it's more expensive than a Golf. The same holds true for the Dodge Neon and the PT Cruiser. The interchangeability of parts is essential to keep costs down, but people don't care. They only see what's on the surface. Let's not stop at just cars. We see evidence of the general masses rich and poor, being caught up in appearances in everything else: plastic surgery to make yourself more sexually desirable, designer clothes to make you look more smarter and sophisticated, and designer computers to make you look more suave. So why not give them what they want? The bottom line IS the dollar sign after all, and if these people were to die tomorrow, nothing would matter as long as they look good in the coffin. Like I mentioned at the beginning, Harley Earl was a shrewd business person in terms of having a sense as to what would work, what the general consumer wanted and how design strength would be more important than the actual automobile's engine, suspension and quality itself, but in terms of an actual car? Well, like Hollywood film-makers he only gives people what they want to see and nothing more, and how he went about it was best described to that of a combination between mafia thug and "designer wanna-be".