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104 BARRETT-JACKSON EXPERIENCE SPRING 2024CROSSING THE BLOCKA CUSTOM 1958 CHEVROLETCORVETTE CONVERTIBLETRUE ICONA celebrated era at General Motors ended and another began unfolding in 1958, when Harley Earl, the giant corporation’s first styling director, announced his impending retirement and Bill Mitchell as his handpicked successor. Earl’s design prowess and organizational skills had made GM one of the leading high-volume manufacturers with a wide array of winning body styles through the 1930s. In 1935, Earl hired fast-rising young designer Bill Mitchell, whose prior credits included a stint at New York’s Barron Collier Advertising firm. While working under Earl’s direction, Mitchell carved out a strong reputation with his design of the Cadillac Series Sixty Special Fleetwood sedan, which previewed new design cues through 1940 that would influence future Cadillac production models. For his part, Earl designed the dramatic 1938 Buick “Y-Job,” revered by many as the first-ever concept car. Following WWII, Earl, Mitchell and the GM design studios devised the 1949 Cadillac Coupe deVille, the 1955-57 Chevrolet Corvette and a succession of show cars boasting breathtaking Spage Age features and design cues for the hugely popular GM Motorama traveling roadshows of the era. The 1956-57 Corvette was distanced from the slowselling original 1953-54 models with a welcome power infusion, courtesy of Chevrolet chief engineer Ed Cole’s brilliant new small-block V8 engine and, for 1956-57, refined and more purposeful styling. By 1958, when