GM's sixth design chief -- who is leading the design direction of the Camaro and CTS Coupe, among others -- feels at home in the office of Harley Earl
Harvey Earl's corner office in the General Motors Design Center fits Ed Welburn like a driving glove. He is impeccably dressed, not in the avant-garde black of his younger designers, but in a gray-flannel suit with a pocket square, GM pin, blue French-cuffed shirt, and black satin tie. Architect Eero Saarinen, who drew the sprawling Design Center as part of the GM Technical Center in the late 1940s, also did Earl's office and its furniture. Earl certainly felt at home in it. His equally flamboyant successor Bill Mitchell fit in, but this mid-century design just looked dated during the years of the three chief designers between Mitchell and Welburn. With GM design making a comeback largely by paying homage to those exuberant Earl and Mitchell years, the office clearly has the right occupant.
"There was a journalist back in the 1980s, interviewing the vice president at the time, who called this 'Dracula's bathroom,'" Welburn says in his soft-spoken, midnight-jazz deejay voice. "Now people come in, you have to charge them admission. I don't take this office for granted at all. The more I learn about Saarinen and Harley Earl, the more I treasure this space."
Edward T. Welburn Jr. replaced Wayne Cherry as vice president for North American design in October 2003. Motoring journalists' first impression of Welburn was that we had another Cherry, at least in the way he looked like the proverbial deer in the headlamps when introducing new designs to the press at auto shows.
"Yeah, that was hard for me. Particularly if it's a vehicle you don't believe in," Welburn says, his delivery having improved. "Luckily I don't have to do that anymore. What we're building today, I believe in."
He's so confident about modern GM design that he's reopened Studio X, the legendary secret space where special projects fly under management's radar. One of its first projects under Welburn was the 2009 Camaro. Mitchell had been the last design chief to use Studio X. Three years ago, Welburn became vice president for global design, a new position reflecting corporate restructuring. Welburn, 57, now oversees 11 design centers in eight countries around the world. Part of GM's restructure has been to put design and engineering back in charge of product development. Welburn works closely with his counterpart in engineering, Jim Queen.
"You know, the new CTS has proportions that are better than the last one," Welburn says. "Designers who retired just a few years ago are asking, 'How are you guys doing this?' The tires, where they're located, relationship to the sheetmetal, that you get to stamp the kinds of shapes we're stamping."
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