THE FEMININE TOUCH

In 1955, General Motors styling guru Harley Earl brought 11 talented women into the male-dominated world of automotive design. What was their lasting impact?

- RICHARD TRUESDELL

Post-war America was a time of unbridled optimism. After WW2, with most of Europe and much of Asia lying devastated, the United States emerged as the world's first superpower.

It was an era during which America's middle class also fully developed, driven by many returning veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill to attend college (the first generation to do so for most) and buy their first house. Those starter homes of 1000sq ft or less often had attached garages. Their new owners, having made sacrifices during the war years, were eager to park a shiny new US-built automobile inside.

The remaining independent makers - such as Nash, Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, KaiserFrazer and more - were the first to introduce all-new models before 1948. But in 1949, the Big Three General Motors, Ford and Chrysler countered. These new cars looked nothing like their warmed-over, pre-war-rooted '48 models. The Big Three offered restyles every year, and planned obsolescence motivated hungry buyers to purchase a new car every other year. America's consumer economy was truly born, and it propelled the country through decades of unprecedented growth and expansion.

With this as a background, and with a brief slowdown for the 1950-'53 Korean conflict, the Big Three embarked on a brutal price war, and caught in the crossfire were the independents. Chrysler was the weakest of the market leaders, but as an engineering-focused company it introduced the legendary first-generation Hemi V8. At Ford, a massive reorganisation was happening in the aftermath of near-bankruptcy in the 1940s. This resurgence was led by founder Henry Ford's son, Henry II, known as The Deuce, and a group of senior managers, called the Whiz Kids, led by Robert McNamara.