Ahead of the publication of Designing Dreams Essays on the inside story of GM, Harley Earl and America's Golden Automotive Age by Dick Ruzzin, we spoke to Dick to find out more about his fascinating career in car design during the US's 'golden age' of motoring.
Dick Ruzzin, author of Designing Dreams
Dick grew up outside of Detroit after World War II, when the automobile industry was coming into its own. He lived on a farm near Detroit and learned to do many things and to become self-sufficient. That served him very well when he became a car designer for General Motors as he could see emerging challenges and problems to be solved. He has an engineering background as well as an aesthetic one so could visualize design solutions that were possible. He thinks that, and his willingness to ask for help, was the foundation for his success.
Designing Dreams is a series of essays orientated around his career as a car designer in America and Europe. While creating the book, he realized, based on his understanding of design and the industry, that the creation of the profession of automobile design by Harley Earl was an important factor in that story, and that it was not sufficiently known and appreciated.
When Dick started work at General Motors as a part of the styling staff, he felt blessed after being told that only one in 200 applicants were hired at that time. As his career developed he was given the freedom to put forward what he felt was the correct design direction, and to then follow up and execute those design proposals in the form of clay models that led to production cars.
The engineering release of those clay models resulted in the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of cars, as created by his small studio team. Car designers that work for a big company rarely have the chance to do an entire car design on their own, as the only designer. Dick had that opportunity, twice.
We asked Dick what his favourite design was, during his career.
He considered it and commented that he worked in America for the great majority of his career, but also spent, in total, five years working in Europe. It's hard to reduce that experience to one design, but he would say that the cars in Europe were the BITTER CD in 1971 and the Opel MAXX in 1996. In the United States, there were several Chevrolets, but the hardest cars to do and the most satisfying for him, and everyone in his studio at the time, were the 1992 Cadillac Seville and Eldorado, both done at the same time. The Eldorado was so successful that it was built for 12 years.
Dick considers that there was a 'quantum leap' during his design career...
There is no doubt in his mind that my work for nine years in helping to convert General Motors from rear wheel drive cars to more fuel efficient front wheel drive cars was absolutely, and without question, a quantum leap. The proposal of that enormous, cultural engineering change, was done by a very small, talented and highly motivated group of people. They all knew the significance of the concept that they were developing. They were very excited about it, and designed the vehicles that were presented to the GM Board of Directors that demonstrated the logic and intelligence of that massive industrial change.
That could not have been done anywhere else within the Corporation, other than at GM Design Staff.
A montage of images from Designing Dreams
When we asked Dick what his favourite piece of design work is, he considers it carefully then answered that there are so many beautiful cars that have been designed in different parts of the world. One that comes immediately to mind is a car that he first saw when he was 11 years old. A Harley Earl Motorama Car, the Cadillac Cyclone. It became a strong influence, not only on future Cadillacs, but also on cars designed by the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation. When he saw a car like that, he thought about what the designers looked at as a future expression of an automobile. He has great respect for those designers who are able to remove themselves from the moment and create a design that belongs far into the future. The Cadillac Cyclone is an amazing car to him, both in its basic theme selection and it's execution as a piece of art.
Dick thinks other automotive designers have been as influential as Harley Earl, and comments that certainly Pininfarina in Italy as well as Giorgetto Giugiaro had a great impact upon automobile design as art. Sir William Lyons in England was able to build on dramatic proportion and create an aerodynamic form language that was unique. And in Germany, Tony Lapine, who came from General Motors Styling, did great work in designing cars for Porsche that represented the German aesthetic. It cannot be forgotten that Harley Earl created the automobile design profession and also invented the clay model in the late 1920s to visualize automobile design in three dimensions. The clay model is still used today by all car manufacturers in the world over 100 years later.
Pages from Designing Dreams
In conclusion, Dick commented...
When he came back to the United States after working in Germany, people would often ask him: "What is the difference between designing a car for America and designing one for Europe"? At that point in time, in the early 1990s, his answer was, "Very little". The reason for that response was that the automobile design profession and all the people who were part of it had matured to the point of easily handling the difference. The needs of all customers could be addressed through the expression of automobile design as a functional art form. Design had evolved, as a profession, it could address all customer needs with equal functional and aesthetic quality. Globally, automobile design started to trend toward industrial design, but it is hard to suppress the dynamic emotion that has historically been part of the automobile as it was originally applied by Harley Earl.
Designing Dreams Essays on the inside story of GM, Harley Earl and America's Golden Automotive Age by Dick Ruzzin is available form 29 July 2025 from Veloce, and on pre-order now.
https://veloce.co.uk/store/Designing-Dreams-p702811076
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