Delta Wing Technology Meets America's Automotive World

Shown directly below is the 1954 XP-21, a.k.a., the first of the famous Firebird trio Harley Earl designed. This sleek experimental laboratory on wheels made the rounds touring many of America's most prestigious engineering institutions; for example, Stanford and Caltech were first on the list. Earl's new specialized industrialized automobile design program and/or car design profession were enthusiastically welcomed at these learning institutions because Pioneer-Earl had just recently started the landmark scholarship programs in academia. Although Harley Earl rarely made the rounds lecturing, he made sure his GM Styling Section subordinates did this important leg work. This was all done in order to inspire and make damn sure the up-and-coming next generation of fresh new auto design/engineers would be well-educated in the newest and most advanced field of auto making. Then of course, many of the most talented young individuals, sprouting forth from the academic world, would first venture to come work at his company, General Motors. 

Back then, planting the seed in academia (mainly top engineering schools and art universities) was always part of Earl's far reaching master plan. At the time, it was hospital routine for many of this company's special one-of-a-kind experimental cars to be parading somewhere within one of this nation's universities. After the success of Firebird I, Earl built the the body of Firebird II out of the wonder metal titanium; witness his U.S. Patent of this dream car detailed further down at this section.

14 additional pages in this report shown here (no. 4 thru 17) list more engineering innovations. If demand warrants it, these pages will be added here at a later date. But, there are a number of significant engineering advances, and technological firsts, revealed in the pages that are here right now. For example, important ideas and "thought starters" first came to be in this radical experimental Firebird: Cruisecontrol, keyless entry, first-ever onboard computer, paper engine testing via digital computer technology (precursor to CAD), automatic guidance system, twilight sentential., etc... Many of the original innovations first experimented with on this specialty car are now standard equipment on 10s of millions of automobiles...In other words, HARLEY EARL WAS HERE.

This pioneering Auto Innovator also created Detroit's first hybrid vehicle, too; a vivid Firebird III in-house documentary movie made in 1958 displays this fact. The following quote is from a 1949 magazine article titled, Meet the GM Designer: "Brother Earl started streamlining before the word was invented."

Harley Earl was one of the great pathfinders of the modern auto world who bucked the odds

What if Harley Earl, the daVinci of Detroit, had not plunked down GM money for the majority of specialty cars he built in the 50s? What kind of cars would all of us be driving today? Model-T variations or perhaps the Russian-Yugoslavian/YUGO ring a bell? Any enthusiast has to only sit in a 1957 Cadillac Coup de Ville, or any modern cars made for the American market place, to enjoy countless luxuries that most people take for granted today. Simply put, Harley Earl turned hurrying into pleasure.

Underbelly of Firebird III detailed above and titanium shelled Firebird II U.S. patent below

Directly below are three of the other patents sited on Harley Earl's titanium Firebird II patent (above).

What's the bottom line?

The two mechanically motorized art forms graphically illustrated and used as examples here were multi-million dollar concept vehicles. Back in the 1950s, H.J. Earl was the only experimental artist / engineer in Detroit who could pull off achieving this type of funding to build motoramic masterpieces. That's because the other design/engineers he was competing with were not yet even close to understanding him and how he created the auto design profession and all his automotive artistry in the first place.