(EXPANDED FROM 12/4/2020)
Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World, is a relatively old book but it still offers useful insight into one of the more influential independent U.S. auto design consultants of the postwar era.
Stevens may have been less visible than Raymond Loewy, but his work for Willys, Studebaker and American Motors arguably had almost as much of an impact. In addition, Steven was more prolific than the other major consultant of that period, Howard “Dutch” Darrin.
Milwaukee Art Museum published this book in conjunction with an exhibit it held in 2003. An overview of Stevens’s remarkably broad range of work is offered, including of cars, toasters, logos and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Although the 220-page oversized paperback has few color photographs, it has an artsy format, replete with large images and lots of friendly white space.
Photographs and illustrations of Stevens’s work are accompanied by text written by Glenn Adamson. The book also includes essays by various authors who discuss Stevens’s role in the evolving field of industrial design.
Carma R. Gorman (2003) noted that “it would have been easy for Adamson to lapse into uncritical laudatory mode” — particularly given the donation of Stevens’s archives to the Milwaukee Art Museum — but “he managed to present, in a forthright and witty manner, his subject’s personal and professional accomplishments and failings.”
That sounds about right. However, as we shall discuss in a moment, Adamson didn’t always get automotive-specific details correct.
Car designs take up a fair portion of book
A variety of automobiles are presented that Stevens played some type of role in designing. These include the 1946 Willys-Overland Jeep wagon and 1947 Jeepster, the 1960 Willys do Brasil Aero 2600, the 1962 Kaiser Jeep Wagoneer, the 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, the 1962-64 Studebaker Lark and the 1964 Excaliber SSK.
Prototypes are also presented. These include utilitarian vehicles such as a proposed 1946 Willys sedan, a 1956 Willys minivan and a rejected facelift of the 1969 Rambler American.
Stevens also dabbled in wildly excessive designs such as the 1954 Die Valkyrie, the 1955 Gaylord Grand Prix and the 1959 Scimitar. His gaudy, neoclassical design sensibility has similarities to that of Virgil Exner’s.
Discussion of Stevens-Darrin conflict is confusing
The book weighs in on a few historical debates. A case in point was Stevens’s role relative to Darrin in the styling of Kaiser-Frazer cars between 1948 and 1952. Although Adamson was more sympathetic to Stevens’s perspective, he stated that it is “impossible to reconstruct what happened.” This was partly because their relationship was so contentious that Darrin sued Stevens for libel.
In addition, Industrial Strength Design argued that the automaker’s main history, which was written by Richard M. Langworth (1975), “was highly influenced by Darrin’s view of events. Langworth corresponded with Stevens on certain details only after his book had gone to press” (p. 115).
Also see ‘The 1949 Kaiser-Frazer’s new body styles showed the limits to innovation’
Here things get confusing. Adamsons stated that Stevens had argued that he and Duncan McRae “were primarily responsible” for the 1951 Frazer convertible and that “Darrin was responsible only for the upper profile of the windshield and the shape of the rear window” (p. 115). Based on the photos I have access to, I do not see a difference between the 1950 and 1951 roof designs. And why would they make such such changes if the sole purpose of the 1951 Frazers was to use up leftover parts (Langworth, 1975)?
Adamson further muddied the waters by suggesting that “the distinctive low-belted ‘pontoon side’ and wraparound bumper look that first appeared on Kaiser-Frazer cars in 1949 were clearly related to that on Stevens’s wartime prophetic automobiles” (p. 115). Really? Those design cues were fairly common.
Adamson conflated sequence of Willys’ car proposals
Industrial Strength Design also discussed Stevens’s role with a proposed postwar Willys sedan that never reached production. Adamson stated that this was because company president Joe Frazer was replaced by Charles Sorenson, who decided to tool up for a new Jeep rather than a passenger car.
Patrick Foster suggested that Sorenson killed the sedan for a simple reason: The major body makers “won’t even talk to us.” Thus, Sorenson “ingeniously” bought appliance stamping presses that couldn’t be used to make the more complex shapes of a car (2014, p. 94).
In a sense, Adamson’s take was more nuanced. He wrote that Sorenson “thought that the sedans were a terrible idea — insufficiently connected with the wartime Jeep and unrealistic in their new tooling requirements. He favored a more conservative approach that would preserve the utilitarian character of the Jeep. He was also intent on performing the transformation on the cheap” (p. 94).
Where Adamson appears to have gone astray was in describing the sequence of prototypes Stevens apparently designed. As discussed further here, Stevens worked with Willys in two stages rather than one, as Adamson suggested.
Comparison of Stevens and Loewy was off base
Adamson argued that Stevens’s approach to facelifting the 1962 Hawk was “antithetical” to that of the Loewy-designed 1956 model, which “had many of the features that were common to his work for the company: relatively short overall length, pronounced fins, and luxurious curvature.”
In contrast, “Stevens’s long, sharp, and finless Gran Turismo Hawk was a dramatic change of pace. The squared-off lines of the car stood in dramatic opposition to the muscular streamlining that Loewy had brought to all of his work with Studebaker. While Loewy’s Hawk had chrome detailing to spare, Stevens’s had only a stainless steel base edge that ran continuously from front to rear bumper” (p. 152).
Also see ‘Accounts of Brooks Stevens’s Studebaker Sceptre and siblings can vary’
This comparison mostly got it backwards. For one thing, the gaudy 1956 Hawk was not emblematic of Loewy’s work. His design team glitzed up the sporty coupe after falling sales were blamed on an ultra-clean look Loewy had given to 1953-54 models (Langworth, 1979).
In addition, Stevens’s Hawk was no longer than Loewy’s. Its main differences were a Thunderbird-like squared off roofline, a chrome-laden grille reminiscent of a Mercedes-Benz, and bright work added throughout the car. These changes hint at how Stevens was a much bigger fan of chrome than Loewy.
Stevens’s political ideology influenced his designs
Adamson grappled with ethical issues surrounding industrial design. Stevens was outspoken about how he viewed his work — which elicited pushback. For example, in 1954 he coined the controversial term “planned obsolescence” to describe an industrial designer’s mission. This meant “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than necessary” (p. 129).
Stevens later explained how that applied to automobiles: “When I restyle a 1961 model car I am not styling it for the man who bought one in 1960. I’m styling it for the man next door who didn’t buy it when his neighbor did” (p. 129).
Stevens further argued that “I could not go on a crusade for good design, I mean, really good, aesthetically good, artistically good design in a manufactured product because it wouldn’t pay off.” He even defended Detroit’s poorly received 1958 models as having merely “out dimensioned and out chromed the most susceptible buyer” (p. 130).
This resulted in a robust debate with Walter Dorwin Teague, who countered that the “function of design, simply put, is to realize the true character of the thing designed, and to reveal the values that have been put into it. If it is used for camouflage, it is being prostituted” (p. 130).
Stevens was sharply critical of labor unions as well as safety and emissions regulations imposed on the automobile industry. Adamson quoted him as saying, “I think this whole new hue and cry championing a boring plainness in cars, dress, furniture and other things is a step toward a dangerous socialistic regimentation. The average American resent[s] regimentation in anything, and is looking for individuality and ego-inspiring styling” (p. 26).
All in all, Industrial Strength Design is a mixed bag
This book offers a visually gorgeous walk through Stevens’s body of work and discusses industrial design ethical debates that are still relevant. Even so, I am hesitant to use Industrial Strength Design as a reference because of factual errors and shaky analysis.
Here we have another example of how people who do not have much, if any, background in the auto industry can be at a big disadvantage when they write historical accounts. Indeed, this seems to be so endemic to the genre that publishers would do well to draw upon fact checkers with appropriate background. It’s a shame when an otherwise good book suffers from avoidable problems.
Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World
- Adamson, Glenn; 2003
- The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
“Stevens presciently argued (in 1942) that ‘today’s Jeep could become tomorrow’s popular car with a minimum of tooling and fabrication cost.’ He illustrated the point with a small, stylish car that compensated for the short frame of a Jeep through the blending of individual fenders into a continuous volume that ran down the flanks of the car. To decrease cost, he explained, the auto would have a minimum of ornamentation, using stylish lines as its main selling point.” (p. 92)
“In December of 1963 the Studebaker plant in South Bend closed for good. Stevens was distraught; the best chance he ever had to put his designs onto automotive assembly lines was ending. Perhaps unfairly, he blamed his adversary’s Avanti for Studebaker’ demise. ‘The public didn’t understand that car,’ he remarked. ‘I wish now we had had that five million dollars for our family cars. We might still be in business.’ The family cars to which Stevens referred were ones he himself had devised for the company, and even after the South Bend factory shut down, he continued to try to sell them to higher-ups at Studebaker.” (p. 154)
“If Stevens had one piece of advice for AMC, it was that the company should try to make cars that looked different from those of the Big Three. The closer the company hewed to the precedent established by its larger competitors, he argued, the more it would struggle financially. In-house designer (Richard) Teague, who felt that the executives at AMC were too conservative, encouraged Stevens and his staff to push the envelope of model change — probably not because he intended to use the proposed designs, but rather in the hopes that competition with the Milwaukee team would induce his own stylists to be more creative. This goal was not shared by several men within the company’s leadership, however, who subscribed to what Stevens called the ‘me too pattern.’ AMC vice presidents Gerald Meyers and Victor Raviolo were particularly risk-averse and hoped to ride the wake of their larger competitors rather than break off in a new direction. Under Raviolo’s influence the company came close to severing its ties to Stevens in late 1967 and finally did end the contract in early 1969.” (pp. 167-8)
OTHER REVIEWS:
Amazon | Hemmings | Winterthur Portfolio | Enterprise & Society | American Scientist
RE:SOURCES
- Foster, Patrick R.; 2014. Jeep: The History of America’s Greatest Vehicle. Motorbooks, Minneapolis, MN.
- Gorman, Carma R.; 2003. “Industrial Strength Design: An Exhibition Review.” Winterthur Portfolio. Winter issue, Vol. 38, No. 4.
- Langworth, Richard M.; 1975. Kaiser-Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit. Princeton Publishing, Princeton, NJ.
- ——–; 1979, 1993. Studebaker 1946-1966: The Classic Postwar Years. Motorbooks International, Osceola, WI.
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Milwaukee Art Museum Brooks Stevens Archives
This review was originally posted on Oct. 1, 2019 and expanded on Dec. 4, 2020 and June 14, 2023.
I recently read this book because I knew little about Brooks Stevens past the usual show cars and Studebaker updates. For me, it was akin to being told to never look behind the curtain. I was unaware of his coinage of the term “planned obsolescence,” and although he was merely saying what others in the industry were thinking, it colored my outtake on the rest of the book with cynicism. Flawed as they were, my image of styling titans such as Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell (and Stevens) is one of loving the product as much as the money, if not more. Seeing the business realities behind trying to keep an independent styling firm afloat dulls the romance a bit, especially since Stevens obviously loved cars, too, considering his museum and extracurricular dalliances with racing.
Either way, the GT Hawk is beautiful, and I’m not sure that there’s ever been a more successful facelift in the world of automobiles.
The 1962-1964 GT Hawk is the finest Studebaker exterior styling, in my opinion, with the 1964 the most stylish. I see great restraint in the use of chrome. The tragedy is that the 1953 Studebaker platform was largely unchanged, with flat floorboards and no step-down interior packaging. I do not know if the five-million dollars spent on the Avanti could have made any difference in tooling up a new sedan, but I doubt it.