To kick things off on this page, the following quote by GM's Irvin W. Rybicki gives some salient reasons why Harley Earl's story went on to be so deeply buried. Mr. Rybicki was a 42-year GM veteran who worked under Earl and, later on, became the third vice president of GM Design (1977-1986). His statements were gathered in various taped interviews taken from 1996 thru 1999:  

"Harley Earl is responsible for more than half of GM's greatest 20th Century milestones. The fact this company had exclusivity of all his work and was able to capitalize off his artistic efforts and innovative engineering ideas first, is perhaps why this man's story is so controversial and a kept secret today in Detroit."

What Mr. Rybicki addressed above...is no longer a secret, a lot of people are becoming more familiar with exactly how the Automobile Design profession is one of the greatest inventions of all time. This invention not only made America strong, it made this country a much wealthier nation...and even though some savvy automobile execs in Detroit today think China is on the brink of taking America's auto industry and running with the purse stings as things start to develop in the Twenty First Century, Motor City execs might be thrilled to know, everything could turn around fast for Detroit.  Maybe if Harley Earl's true story of "how he became responsible for creating Detroit's dependency on design" would have stayed buried another twenty-five years, China very well might have stolen one of America's crown jewels of industry.

The “Here Is What It Is, What It Does, How To Use It, How It Works and Why You’ll Want It” part of this dynamic Detroit Story has simply never been told. In essence, how Harley Earl created the auto industry’s Dependency On Design is a huge piece of the modern story-telling pie on what makes this industry tick today. But, nobody, not even legions of Detroit’s finest engineers and highest paid auto execs know anything about it. Yes, this is a huge distortion in history…and how it got this way is one of the best stories never told.

After all, it was mainly because of this man’s “new profession," that a design monopoly was first created inside GM. In fact this stems directly to Mr. Earl bringing a new blueprint along with him when he moved to Detroit from Hollywood, California.

Notice the Styling University the four Vice Presidents of Design attended, above right picture.