CLASSIC CARS
Visionary GM chief brings a runway attitude to auto industry.
The story behind autumn debuts of new car models
Amuch-anticipated event, the annual introduction of new auto models once was welcomed at dealerships with searchlights and balloons—and now with a blitz of media marketing.
But the industry didn’t start that way. For decades, model designs and engineering improvements occurred incrementally. Ford’s Model T, for instance, was essentially the same through its factory run, 1908-1927.
Credit for annual model changes goes to General Motors chief Alfred P. Sloan Jr., who led the move to introduce fashion to auto design. Sloan’s marketing strategies helped GM surpass Ford as the dominant automaker in North America.
The first GM model to get an aesthetic face-lift but without a significant update in engineering was the Chevrolet, in 1923—the same year Sloan became the company’s president.
Coachbuilder and automotive designer Harley Earl caught Sloan’s attention when he was commissioned to produce a new design for a Cadillac division model, the 1927 LaSalle. Sloan quickly put Earl in charge of design and color for all the brands under the GM umbrella.
That same year, Buick began printing each model year prominently on the cover of its promotional brochures.
While rival Ford’s Model T was produced for nearly two decades, its successor, the Model A, lasted only five years. By 1933, Ford also adapted marketing based on model year. Chrysler, Studebaker, Nash and Hudson followed suit as the decade progressed.
Seasonal changes in demand made layoffs common in the auto industry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered on Jan. 31, 1935, that new models of passenger cars be introduced in the fall instead of the winter to “result in a greater regularity of work and in lessening the spread between the peaks and valleys of employment.”