(7 of 10)
"Listen!" Edward Nicholas Cole displayed his consuming love for cars—in a curious way—even as a farm boy back in compact Marne, Mich. (1959 pop. 300). At five, he hopped into the family's 1908 Buick, began toying with levers—and smashed it into a tree. He also showed a tremendous capacity for work. Rising by the dawn's early light, he milked 20 cows, bottled the milk and delivered it before school. The milk route taught him to hustle ("Because the load becomes lighter"), and it also taught him that a touch of extra service can win customers. He built a snowplow, hitched a horse to it and in the winter cleared his customers' driveways. Summers he hawked Ford tractors to farmers, found that the best way to sell was to demonstrate the plows himself; he would plow the farmers' land, and the farmers figured that if young Ed could do it that easily, so could they. He earned $600 a summer. Winters he built and sold radios. He also rebuilt two nearly wrecked cars, thus became, at 16, one of Marne's rare two-car owners.
Setting out to be a lawyer, Cole went through Grand Rapids Junior College. But he switched to the General Motors Institute to earn while he learned—a month in a Cadillac plant, a month in class studying mechanical engineering. Cadillac thought him so bright that it hired him as a full-time engineer in 1933. Cole celebrated by marrying his home-town sweetheart, blonde, blue-eyed Esther Engman.
But she often had to take a back seat to Cole's first love: the Cadillac engine. Even at parties Cole slipped out to his car to tinker with it. Once, working to tone down engine noise, Cole tiptoed into a party while everyone was standing around a piano and singing. He hauled out his longtime crony, Harry Barr, now Chevy's chief engineer. Said Cole, starting the car, "Listen!" Barr listened, said it sounded fine, and went back in to sing. But Cole stayed outside, listening to his engine music all night. "That," says Barr, "was the way Ed went to parties."
Ed Cole, good mechanic, soon got a reputation as a Mr. Fix-It. Through the '30s Cole made giant strides in reducing engine noise and solving problems of engine cooling. The U.S. Army, whose tanks were regularly breaking down from engine over heating, grew attentive. Just before Pearl Harbor, Cole got his toughest job: developing a new rear engine for the Army's M-5 light tank in 90 days. Cole beat the deadline, and during the war Cadillac built 12,500 M-55. After the war, Cadillac assigned Cole to apply his tank know-how to building an experimental rear-engine Cadillac. It was a weird monster, with the engine in the back seat and dual rear tires. But during the icy winter of 1945-46 while his neighbors' cars skidded around the driveways, Cole's sped off with sure-handed ease. That car proved to Cole "that the rear engine provides better steering and handling on slippery roads.'' But it also showed him that a rear engine for a big car posed enormous problems.