Retro Stories by David Burrell
Who styled the 48-215 Holden? We should all know the answer. But somehow it has been glossed over, ignored even, for many years. If you look to Holden’s corporate history for the answer you will find very little.
Popular wisdom puts General Motors (GM) styling supremo Harley Earl in the frame. He took credit for many designs, but that’s because he was the boss. But it was not Mr Earl who styled the 48-215.
The guy who really drew the shape was Franklin Quick Hershey. And his contribution as the designer of one of this country’s cultural icons goes uncelebrated and unrecognised.
Hershey was not just some backroom stylist at GM’s design headquarters in Detroit. He was a well-known and respected designer and had a significant influence on car design trends from the mid-1930s right through to the end of the 1950s, working for GM, Packard and Ford.
Hershey’s career began in the late 1920s designing custom cars, based on Duesenberg and Cadillac frames, for rich clients of the Murphy Coach Works company, in Pasadena, California. He left Murphy to go work for Hudson in Detroit. In 1932 he moved to GM where he managed Pontiac’s styling studio for a couple of years. He put the “silver streaks” on the 1935 Pontiacs which gave the brand instant recognition and helped to double sales in 12 months.
He was given responsibility for GM’s international design in the mid-1930s, which included Opel and Holden. He visited Australia to set up a basic design studio at Holden in the late 1930s. He established the design parameters of the 1939 Opel Kapitan, which was a style leader of its era.
After WWII, he was the boss of Cadillac styling where he championed the fins on the 1948 model. It was a design theme that defined 1950s American cars.
Hershey had a falling out with Harley Earl and moved to Packard. That gig did not last too long because of Packard’s dire financial situation and so he went over to Ford.
At Ford he led the team which created the Thunderbird, the 1955/56 full-sized Ford line up and started the designs for Ford’s big selling 1957 models, which came within 100 units of outselling Chevrolet. So, the first Holden is in illustrious company!
Hershey drew the 1948 Holden when he returned to GM before the end of WWII. Speaking to author Edson Armi for his book The Art of American Car Design, Hershey described styling the Holden as just something to do while waiting for his Cadillac assignment. Working out of a cramped studio in GM’s Detroit styling building he completed the Holden and then moved to Cadillac. He told Armi:
“When I returned to GM in 1944, the first project was to develop a design for a new small Australian car called the Holden. This I did with no help except for a layout man and modellers. It turned out to be a cute little car about the size of a Toyota Corolla.”
That Hershey recalled the Holden as “cute” and “small’ is a fascinating insight into how it was perceived in Detroit. When he was working on the Holden it carried the name “ANZAC.”
Hershey left Ford to go to Kaiser Aluminium as its Head of Design where he worked for the remainder of his career, designing, promoting and demonstrating the use of aluminium in place of steel in everyday products, particularly cars. He died in 1997, aged 90.
