top 12 harley earl designs
1927 to 1959 was the golden era of General Motors. This was the period when Harley Earl started as Vice President of the Art and Color Division and gave birth to the modern notion of car design.
Earl eschewed the purely engineering driven practicality of Ford to take inspirations from aircraft and space age concepts and add them to cars, turning them into works of art. The designs ranged from the highly futuristic Firebird gas turbine concept vehicles to the wildly successful production Corvette.
Like almost all product design and architecture, the stamp of authorship is not clear cut and nor should it be. Many designs that are associated with him were produced by people working under him, but it was Early himself who created the school and he deserves a place alongside Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames as one of America’s most important designers.
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The design went from the drawing board to a full scale mockup in less than 8 months, creating one of the most successful car designs of all time.
The ultimate fin car with no less than nine of them, this was the zenith of Earls work on Firebirds.
Supposedly based on the Douglas Skyray delta wing fighter, the firebird I was the most blatant aircraft inspired car designs, complete with a gas turbine engine.
