We have all heard the expression “behind every great man there is a great woman”…in the case of Harley Earl, there was a great person behind Harley Earl but it was not a woman but a gentleman named Carl Renner. At large percentage of the great GM Motorama cars that were presented by General Motors during Harley Earl’s reign received their initial design inspiration from a gentleman named Carl Renner.
Many people have already heard the story of how Harley Earl was a man that gathered a critical mass of young designers, splitting them up into teams and putting them into separate design studios and telling them what he wanted in general terms. For a certain type of concept car for one of the different divisions. Everyday he would visit the different studios and critique what the group of young designers came up with from the day before. He was known to move individual team members from one studio group to another. And in one situation I heard where he even took a drawing from the Pontiac studio group that he liked but he felt that it would be better for the Oldsmobile division and gave it to another studio group as a starting point for that studio to finish it off.
Getting back to Carl Renner, he also was the man who some how came up with drawings that inspired other designers who were allowed to use the drawings to make a final dream car/concept car that would be turned into a fabulous show car that became part of General Motors Motorama.
After the Bortz Auto Collection made The Great Warhoop’s Junkyard Find of 1988, Carl Renner found out that we had acquired the 1955 LaSalle Roadster and he sent to me his “ORIGINAL” drawing for the inspiration of the Motorama LaSalle Roadster that he had submitted to Harley Earl. I thought that it was just something for me to view and when I called him to tell him that I was going to send it back to him, he told me no, it was a gift to me. I didn’t feel right and tried to offer payment for it because I knew it was of “great value” but he told me absolutely not, it was something that should stay with the LaSalle Roadster. You might say Carl was not only the number one designer who envisioned the future at GM during the 1950s but also was a true and magnanimous gentleman.
I thought that I was one of the very few people who realized the importance of the Carl Renner’s contribution to General Motor’s overall design under Harley Earl.
For myself this started a long friendship with many phone conversations and USPS mail correspondence.
Then some time ago I discovered a book that was written by a scholar and author named Frederic Sharf who bought many of the Carl Renner design drawings from his widow. This is a book that blew me away in terms of being able to see Carl Renner’s works all in one place. The book is titled, “Carl Renner 1950s GM Dream Car Creator” by Frederic A. Sharf. It is highly recommended reading for anybody who wants to enjoy, study and be part of the dream car/concept car design of the 1950s and early 1960s.
Yes, Carl Renner was the original heartbeat of the GM postwar design department and I dare say that there hasn’t been anybody that has the total unique talent that can fill his shoes since he left GM in 1980. The book is highly recommended reading and should not be missed.
To view more about GM Motorama “Dream Cars” (concept cars) go to BortzAutoCollection.com