| 1948 CADILLAC Page one |
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The true postwar design history at Cadillac begins with the
development of the 1948 model. As World War II drew to a close, there
was a climate at Cadillac which had never existed before. Forces of unrest
were afoot and a couple of key people, who might otherwise be relied
upon to make important decisions, weren't even there.
But there was something about Clara's 1918 phaeton that awakened in
the boy a deep appreciation for a well-designed machine. When his mother
sold the phaeton after moving to California, the boy was heartbroken. He
began making sketches of it, and from there expanded into the creation of
his own automobile designs. Promising himself that one day he would
design a Cadillac, that boy grew up to be one of the most influential
automobile designers of all time: Franklin Q. Hershey.
Hershey was initiated into the profession of automotive design at the
Walter M. Murphy Body Company in Beverly Hills, California, where he
created special automobile bodies for movie stars and millionaires. Later,
he settled into a position with General Motors in Detroit. There, he
developed a Bentley-style radiator for Pontiac, which quickly gained
Hershey the recognition and support of Harley Earl, GM's design czar.
That was followed by the famed Silver Streak Pontiacs -- a design theme
that pulled the marque out of its commercial doldrums and became its
trademark for two decades.
Upon his return from a stint in Germany, where he worked with GM's
Opel Division, Hershey was made head of the General Motors Advanced
Design Studio at 40 Milwaukee Avenue in Detroit.
There on the runway, sat the thirteenth Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the
twin-boomed aeronautical marvel that after some further development was
going to set combat records in the coming war. Its radical design opened
Mitchell's, and especially Hershey's, eyes to possibilities unthought of
before -- they were transfixed by the elegance of the plane's design.
Hall Hibbard and Kelly Johnson, the designers of the plane German
fighter pilots would later label der Gabelschwanz -- the fork-tailed
devil -- were quite modest about their influential design. The plane had
evolved into its form because it had to accommodate two liquid-cooled GM
Allison engines each with a General Electric turbocharger and Prestone
radiators. Johnson was quoted in historian Bill Yenne's book on Lockheed
that, "There was a reason for everything that went into it, a logical
evolution. The shape took care of itself. In design, you are forced to
develop unusual solutions to unusual problems." In other words, the plane's
design followed the functional requirements the military had laid down to
the designers. It is one of those interesting ironies of history that Cadillac
Motor Division manufactured precision assemblies for the Allison engines
used on the P-38 during the war. Cadillac even made limited use of this
fact in its wartime advertising.
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