In living color, here’s an original film with rare look inside the styling process at General Motors circa 1949.

By 1949, design boss Harley Earl had gathered the forces and refined the processes that made General Motors the acknowledged leader in styling of the auto industry. And in doing so, Earl created the template for the other automakers to follow in creating their own design studios. This original 1949 film, produced by GM Photographic and called Styling the Motor Car, gives us a rare look inside the process in these early years.

After a rather slow start, the 17-minute film digs into the clay-modeling phase, hardwood die models, the fabric and color studios, every important step of the styling process. At the time, GM was a major player in the rail transportation industry with its Electro-Motive division, so there’s even a scene featuring a scale model railroad train with a diesel locomotive and rail cars—complete with miniature passengers. At around the 12;50 mark, there’s a beautiful scale model of Harley Earl’s 1948 Corsair dream car (more on the Corsair here). We also enjoyed the airbrushed full-scale wall renderings of future GM passenger cars—wow. There’s a lot to see here so we’ll let you get to it. Video below.