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The Classic Cars. The paramount importance of style, so evident in 1958 models, was slow to make itself felt on automakers. In the years when buying, driving and tinkering with the family car were a proud male prerogative (and when most car owners could still distinguish a carburetor from an oil filter), the big sales features were dependability and technical improvements—plus the giddy growth of the U.S. itself. Every new road opened up a new market; every new mechanical advance—hydraulic brakes, balloon tires, steel to replace wood and leather—brought the new buyers flocking to Detroit's door. The famed Ford model T went 19 years without a basic body change. For the Hollywood movie star or Wall Street tycoon who wanted something special, there was the custom-body shop. But even Designer Gordon Buehrig, who styled three classic U.S. cars—the Duesenberg J, the boat-tailed Auburn Speedster, the Cord 810—worked almost unnoticed. "The job was just a job," says Buehrig, today a Ford engineer. "We worked in a corner of the plant, and none of us thought we were working on a classic."
Not until the early '30s did Detroit's automakers realize the potential of launching new-looking models (but not too new) every year to lure more customers. Under G.M. President Alfred P. Sloan, Harley Earl set up the first full-fledged styling section, and in the process gave G.M. the style lead for more than 20 years. Earl pioneered the rounded body for mass-production cars, slanted windshields, fenders that projected over the doors, the hardtop convertible. Despite G.M.'s success others were slow to follow. Even as late as 1948, Chrysler President K. T. Keller hotly defended his high-hat, high-topped, old-fashioned cars: "There are parts of this country, containing millions of people, where both the men and the ladies are in the habit of getting behind the wheel, or on the back seat wearing hats . . ." Not until 1952, when President L. L. Colbert made Virgil Exner, who had worked under Raymond Loewy styling the new eye-catching, postwar Studebaker, director of styling, did styling come into its own at Chrysler. Ford also cared so little for style that it let its out side bodybuilders design the new models, except for the Lincoln Zephyr and the famed Continental, which were largely designed by Edsel Ford, who understood the value of good design but was unable to sell his ideas to Old Henry. When President Henry Ford II's new team took over after World War II, it realized the mistake and in 1946 hired Walker, then a freelance designer, to catch up to G.M. He quickly set the modern tone that helped head Ford back toward the top.