In a recent post on Stillen’s contest to design a body kit for the Scion FR-S, I brought up the history of the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild, a scholarship based model making contest for budding designers that ran from 1930 to 1968. Since just about all of the promotional materials for the Guild were targeted at boys, I wondered if any girls ever tried to enter the competition.

Ron Will, who was a national winner of the Guild competition in 1961, later worked at GM design and is now retired after heading Subaru styling for 25 years, is active in the reunions that Guild participants have organized, so I contacted him. To his knowledge, no girls ever tried to enter the competition. With the changes in women’s roles Will says that had the Guild continued beyond 1968, he’s sure that it would have been opened up to female participation, just as the Chevrolet sponsored Soap Box Derby was. Richard Earl disagrees. In fact, the grandson of Harley Earl, the man who started GM’s styling department, says that the Guild was ended specifically to prevent girls and minorities from competing. Furthermore, Earl told me that his source was none other than Irv Rybicki, who headed GM styling after Bill Mitchell, Harley Earl’s successor, retired.

Richard Earl’s mission is enshrining his grandfather’s legacy as the father of automotive styling and he operates CaroftheCentury.com, dedicated to Harley Earl. Since he’s written about the “Damsels of Design”, the women designers who worked for Earl, I contacted Richard to find out if Sue Vanderbilt, the most prominent of GM’s female designers in the 1950s and 1960s, was still alive to see if I could get her perspective on the notion of girls participating Craftsman’s Guild.

Chuck Jordan with boys competing in the Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild

Earl informed me that Vanderbilt had passed away but then alluded to “the real reason” why the Guild was discontinued.  He was surprised that I’d never heard the story, since I’ve posted before at TTAC about Bill Mitchell’s supposed bigotry. My curiosity piqued, I asked him to clue me in. This is what he said.

Certain Detroit history is illusive. This particular area is one of them. What follows is kind of fast and loose.

I found out why the illustrious Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild was eliminated while interviewing certain GM Styling Section veterans and Damsels as well when I lived in Detroit area researching the history of Harley Earl/GM’s Styling&Design legacy. I was fortunate to not only sit down and talk to Henry Lauve, Paul Gillian, Irv Rybicki, Homer LaGassey, Stan Parker, Loretta Ramshaw’s brother who worked at Styling for a long time, George Pisiani and a parade of other great old veteran GM Styling guys; but as I mention I talked with a number of Damsels of Design as well.

Irv Rybicki, head of GM styling 1977-1986

I’ll focus primarily on what Irvine Rybicki told me while I was visiting him in his retirement home in East Sandwich, Mass… Reason I’m mentioning all this has to do with the sensitive stuff I learned from Irv, you know the behind-the-scenes stuff on GM Styling/Design. He was not like Jordan, a power broker, and Irv wasn’t scared of losing his pension or any reprisals be waged against him by what he said. He was honest and unmerciful about what went wrong after Harley Earl left the corporation and Detroit’s auto world.

Ronnie, you actually have a little knowledge as to why the FBCG went away because you wrote a story a couple of years ago pointing to the heart of the matter in your titled article, Was GM’s Head Bill Mitchell A Sexist Bigot?

Here’s what Irv told me, “The FBCG was disbanded because GM’s top execs at the time in power sided with Bill Mitchell and didn’t want blacks or young girls coming in and being involved in any way shape or form with the event. So they just got rid of it and told themselves they didn’t really need it anymore and it had already served its purpose.”

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

GM’s final peak in US market share was in 1978, before it began its long decline. For the fifty years prior, only two men oversaw the styling of GM during those golden decades. The hand off from one to the other was was hardly smooth in the end, with a painful transition for the 1959 models that were a essentially a hybrid of the two. But for the 1961 models, Bill Mitchell was now completely in control, and few cars show his love for sharply sculptured surfaces and a restrained use of chrome than the very handsome 1961 and 1962 Cadillacs.

If you’re having a hard time keeping your eyes on the Caddy because of that beguiling gray car in the background, head to the Transvertible CC to satisfy your curiosity. And when you’re done, let’s pick up the history lesson on what I consider to be one of the most attractive Caddies ever.

The 1959′s were a dramatic departure from the out-of date and excessively chromed and bloated ’58s. But they still showed Harley Earl’s influence in his love of rounded and smooth shapes punctuated by dramatic details, especially in his beloved wrap-around panoramic windshields with their resultant dog legs, as well as bold fins and strong chrome accents.

Mitchell’s love for chiseled and more European inspired design manifested itself most completely and perfectly in the 1963 Buick Riviera, but the 1961 Cadillac was a strong step in that direction. The front end became dramatically lighter and more delicate, the greenhouse was now angular and creased, and the panoramic windshield tossed out on the chrome heap of history along with the fins. The result was much more sophisticated, elegant and yet still very much encapsulated the space age theme of the times.

Cadillac did a very unusual thing in 1959 and 1960, essentially previewing their future styling with the very rare and ultra expensive Eldorado Brougham sedan.  These were coach built in Italy by Pininfarina, and only a couple hundred of the almost three-times more expensive hardtops were sold.

But the 1959 Brougham (above) and the 1960 (top) both predicted the following year’s styling remarkably well. For the right price, you could drive next year’s Caddy today. What a concept!

Probably the biggest challenge for the ’61 and ’62 Cadillac was what to do with the fins. Having essentially invented the whole thing in 1948, Cadillac was deeply associated with them. Yet the whole industry was abandoning them wholesale after the big bow-out of 1959-1960, GM more than anyone. For 1961, all the GM lines save Cadillac completely rid themselves of any vestige of their former existence, quicker and more decisively than both Ford or Chrysler. But Cadillac retained them, in a way that both honored the heritage imbued in them, and yet still worked in the new and more contemporary design language.

This Series 62 six-window hardtop was the entry-level Cadillac, costing $5,080 ($36k adjusted). That didn’t include the increasingly popular air conditioning, or the GuideMatic automatic headlight dimmer, whose electric eye is sitting the on the dash looking like a radar detector. GM first introduced that in 1952, and after being withdrawn on the rest of the GM lines in the mid-sixties, Cadillac retained it until 1988.

The choice between this six window sedans versus the identically priced four window version was a trade off of more or less privacy vs. visibility. Or did they appeal to different personality types? The six window sedan was becoming an anachronism, but Cadillac retained it through 1964. But the new direction in more enclosed coupes and sedans for all of GM had begun in 1961 with the Cadillac Sixty Special Sedan, and quickly migrated across the divisions for 1962. It was to be a major styling direction that has still not found its end today.

Interior appointments in this ’62 are solid and tasteful, using high quality materials. An example of that is the front seat back and the heavy use of metal throughout. Within a few years that would all change, when a heavy-handed effort to convey “luxury” through vinyl wood and other superficial changes took precedence at the expense of actual quality materials.

Cadillacs of this vintage bowed out of the horsepower and cubic inch race: their 390 cubic inch V8 with 325 horsepower was smaller than optional engines in the cheapest Chevys, Fords and Plymouths. Eventually, Caddy stepped up again, but the emphasis was more on smooth and quiet cruising rather than impressive acceleration.

More New Curbside Classics Here

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