3 HARLEY EARL 1893-1969

WHO: The most omnipotent designer of the modern automobile age. If the car is the most influential product of the 20th century, Harley Earl is its most influential designer. He was responsible for the styling and appearance of all the great General Motors cars, including Cadillacs, Chevrolets and Buicks.

WHAT: Head of Art and Colour Section at General Motors for 32 years from 1927, in which capacity he supervised the design of some 50 million cars and reinforced the concept of product obsolescence with each seductive new model.

WHERE: First Hollywood, where he worked in the coach-building shop established by his father, hand-crafting custom cars for early silent movie stars. (One client decided on the colour of the bodywork by pouring cream into coffee until he achieved the shade he wanted.) Then Detroit, where Alfred P Sloane was building up General Motors as a consumer-conscious rival to Ford.

WHY: Unlike Henry Ford, a farmboy who developed the car to escape from the drudgery and loneliness of rural farm life, Earl grew up amid the glamour of Hollywood and was the perfect choice to give Sloane what he wanted, namely ‘a production automobile that was as beautiful as the custom cars of the period’.

ICONS: Just name your favourite Cadillacs, Chevrolets or Buicks (mine is the 1947 Buick Roadmaster). There are also Earl’s dream cars such as the Y Job of 1937 and the Le Sabre model of 1949. Earl even designed the Greyhound bus, using Raymond Loewy as a consultant.

INFLUENCE: Earl encouraged US car buyers to consume with confidence and US designers to be proud of their vernacular tradition, and not feel inferior to European style. The crown prince of chrome, two-tone paint, tail-fins and wraparound windscreens was a design lowbrow, who said: ‘I like baseball and I love automobiles.’

ODDBALL: The certainty with which Earl, a large and intimidating presence, conducted himself in the General Motors studios contrasts sharply with the ambivalence which surrounds his reputation today. Since the Seventies, a more environment-conscious America has turned its back on gas-guzzlers. Like his cars, Earl was not built to last.

SOUNDBITE: ‘Harley Earl invented the dream car at a moment in American history when there was a confidence that a better future would be brought about more quickly by ever-increasing consumption of ever-changing style’ – Stephen Bayley.