Harley Earl’s story began in the Michigan pine forests in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wooden wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village in California called Hollywood, where young Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied them to designing sleek, racy-looking automobile bodies for the fast crowd of the burgeoning silent movie business.
As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass manufacturing, Harley returned to Michigan where, at General Motors’ invitation, he introduced art into the rigid mechanics of automaking. Over the next thirty years, Harley operated as a kind of combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time, redefine the form and function of the country’s premier product. His impact was profound. When he retired as GM’s vice president of styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the manufacturing capital of the world, and General Motors ranked as the most successful company in the history of business.
