Does anyone else find this current GM commerical to be nothing less than an all out admission their current designs (and designers) are not effective? Bringing back the ghost of Harley Earl to hopefully pump some life into an otherwise moribund group of designers.......tsk..tsk. H. Earl is probably spinning in his grave over all the plastic clading being used by GM these days.

 

Who is This H. Earl. never heard of him.

 

I don't know who Harley Earl was, but the guy who plays him was Cruizer from the movie "Stripes"

 

Harvey Earl was a big wig at GM back in the 50's and 60's (not sure of the dates, but that general era). I don't even know exactly what he did but he is a real guy.

 

Harley was supposedly the father of the dream car design era whose career stretched over several decades at GM. The early Corvette was his most notable design. Your responses confirm my feeling this is a very strange ad campaign as only elderly enthusiasts would even know who he was.

Don't feel bad though, few people outside of Detroit knew of him even during his heyday. GM did not particularly like their employees to have celebrity status. The stars were supposed to be the cars. Why GM thinks this is an effective ad baffles me completely.

Here's a link if you want more info:
http://www.detnews.com/history/earl/earl.htm

 

Harley Earl founded the styling department at GM. It was originally called the Art & Colour Section when he started it in the late 20's. The first "styled" car was the original LaSalle; up until then, the engineers were responsible for the look of a vehicle, or the body manufacturer that supplied the bodies handled it. Mr. Earl took the credit for every new design that came out of GM until his retirement in 1959. Some call him the "father of the tailfin" that he first put on the 1948 Cadillac. His last designs were the bloated, over-chromed 1958 models. He was a very tall, domineering, over-bearing man that was feared by everyone that worked for him. His hand-picked successor was Bill Mitchell, who, lucky for GM, actually possessed good taste and smart ideas when it came to automotive styling. I'll stop here- this is already more than you really wanted to know anyways, right?

 

The first thing that came to my head is he must be peeved in heaven because those Buicks are just as ugly as the rest of the lineup.