Fins: Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit

The New York Times bestselling author of Bitter Brew chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the remarkable life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined.

Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wooden wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in a dirt road village named Hollywood, California, where young Harley took the skills he learned working in his father’s carriage shop and applied them to designing sleek, racy-looking automobile bodies for the fast crowd in the burgeoning silent movie business.

As the 1920s roared with the sound of mass manufacturing, Harley returned to Michigan, where, at GM’s invitation, he introduced art into the rigid mechanics of auto-making. Over the next thirty years, he functioned as a kind of combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time, redefining the form and function of the country’s premier product. His impact was profound. When he retired as GM’s VP of Styling in 1958, Detroit reigned as the manufacturing capitol of the world and General Motors ranked as the most successful company in the history of business.

Knoedelseder tells the story in ways both large and small, weaving the history of the company with the history of Detroit and the Earl family as Fins examines the effect of the automobile on America’s economy, culture, and national psyche.

This sweeping narrative captures the birth of the American auto industry through the epic life of the man who gave it style.

• A Biography of an Innovator: Follow the epic journey of Harley Earl, the eccentric, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college, revolutionized car design, and became the ‘combination Steve Jobs and Tom Ford of his time.’
• The Birth of Automobile Styling: Go inside the creation of a new profession as Earl introduces art to the assembly line, battling engineers to transform utilitarian machines into objects of desire.
• Hollywood Meets Detroit: Discover the surprising link between the silent film industry and the dawn of custom car culture, as movie stars became the first clients for radical new designs.
• The Golden Age of the Auto Industry: Witness the clash of titans like GM and Ford, the rise of Detroit as the world’s manufacturing capitol, and the creation of an industry that defined the American century.