Meet vice presidents Charles A. Chayne and Harley Earl as they tell the engineering and design story at General Motors for 1953.

As we often say here at Mac’s Motor City Garage, one favorite thing about these vintage automotive films is the opportunity to see and hear the industry’s historic figures walking and talking on the screen. It helps us get to know them that much better. This 1953 General Motors movie, produced for visitors to the Motorama shows, offers us a visit with two key men in the engineering and design ranks at GM for decades, Charles A. Chayne and Harley Earl.

Of course, Earl requires no introduction to contemporary gearheads. As the all-powerful head of styling at General Motors from 1927 to 1958, he influenced the exterior design of every GM product built in those years, including some of the most memorable cars in history, from the 1927 LaSalle to the 1957 Chevrolet.

While not as well known to enthusiasts today, Chayne was equally influential at GM. In his 15 years (1936-51) as chief engineer at Buick, the GM division was an industry  innovator. He was promoted to vice president of engineering for the entire corporation in 1951, a role he served until his retirement in 1963. Chayne was also a passionate car guy and an early classic auto enthusiast. The magnificent Bugatti Royale in the Henry Ford Museum is from his collection.

There are many fascinating moments in the film, but we were especially intrigued with the segment on displacement, compression ratio, and horsepower starting at around the seven-minute mark, and the demonstration of automatic transmission research at around 11 minutes. Video below.