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By Root 897 0

was in Warren, Michigan, in the GM Tech Center. This is where Design, Engineering, and Advanced Research were situated. This is where ideas were floated, radical designs were created, decisions to produce were made. Finance and the all-powerful “Treasurer’s Office” (referred to as the “T.O.” within GM) were not located in the Tech Center, nor even in the venerable GM Building in Detroit. Far from the real action, Finance and T.O. were in New York, America’s financial capital. GM’s chairmen were almost always alumni of the T.O.; they ran the finances and steered the (compliant) board of directors. But the president and chief operating officer were always selected from the “hardware” end, usually from Engineering. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the power to run the car business resided principally with the president, with the hierarchically senior chairman responding to the initiatives of the doers as well as counting and reallocating the vast sums of money that GM’s successful product programs generated.

And then there was Design, first under Harley Earl, later under Bill Mitchell. These men were celebrities, as were their talented subordinates. Earl had the ear of Alfred P. Sloan, routinely calling him to plead the reversal of decisions deemed not in Styling’s best interest. Mitchell, Earl’s successor, further expanded the influence and power of GM Styling (now called “Design”). Whether it involved cars, trucks, office décor, building architecture, or corporate aircraft interiors, anything visible to the human eye and associated with GM required the involvement and approval of Design. The epic GM pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, unequalled in razzle-dazzle opulence before or since, was a monument to the power of GM Design.

Design’s amazing power was often wielded ruthlessly. Bill Mitchell once walked into a Buick studio (located in the Warren complex) and discovered the head of the Buick Division reviewing the full-scale clay model of one of “his” future Buicks. Furious, Mitchell demanded to know why the division head had dared venture into his, Mitchell’s, domain! The Buick executive, apparently a courageous sort, responded, “This is my studio. It may be in your building, but the studio is mine. Buick pays all the expense; it comes out of my budget. I have every right to be here!” Mitchell, momentarily nonplussed, stomped out, called his finance guy, and asked if this was true. The keeper of the budgets told him that, yes, the production studios, whether Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, or Cadillac, were all funded by the divisions themselves.The so-called advanced studios, on the other hand, were on the budget of GM Design and, therefore, Mitchell’s.

Mitchell had a solution: he ordered the removal of all work in progress from the division-financed production studios, and had the “clays,” with the attendant designers and modelers, moved into the advanced areas.The next time the general manager of the Buick Division showed up to review “his” Buick clay model, he found a cavernous, empty room. Access to “Advanced” was, of course, denied. (Behavior like this did not endear Design to the rest of the company.)

In another act of naked hubris, Mitchell decided that the Camaro, Firebird, and Corvette, the company’s trio of sports cars, did not “sound right.” They were equipped with the company’s V8s, powerful and reliable, still revered to this day, but to Mitchell’s discerning ear they didn’t sound as good as a Ferrari or Lamborghini V12. Unlike the V8’s rumble, those engines produced a sound much like the rending of expensive fabric, transitioning into a wonderful high-pitched wail at higher RPMs. Ferraris had the sound of expensive hardware, and Mitchell wanted it. He talked to Engineering, who didn’t fully understand, or want to understand, what Mitchell was saying.

Mitchell, knowing all too well the styling axiom “I hear you talking, but my ears can’t see,” decided that only a demonstration would suffice. He dispatched an emissary to Maranello, Italy, to purchase a factory-fresh Ferrari V12