Matthew Kilkenny admits in the preface to his new book, Detroit Steel Artists: How Edsel Ford, Ray Dietrich, Tom Hibbard, and Ralph Roberts Turned Motor City into a Styling Mecca Before Harley Earl, that, when he sat down to put together the volume, he hadn’t set out to write about the origins of American automotive styling. Instead, he’d sought to put to paper “a book about Packards,” his favourite classic-car marque. Kilkenny, after all, grew up around pre-war Packards; often judges them at events like the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance; and owns a ’34 he restored himself.
But at a certain point, Kilkenny pivoted to penning a work of a broader scope, with a more flexible outline that shot off in several directions as he dug up more and more research on the lesser-known stories behind some of the industry’s first coachbuilders.
“This book evolved as I discovered new material and connected the dots,” he told Driving.ca recently. “While I believe this book has the most comprehensive review of the Le Baron companies and Dietrich Inc., who were two of the most significant custom and semi-custom coachbuilders during this time, the […] book’s larger picture is how car styling started and who some of the important people were in making cars styling-centric.”
The author doesn’t exaggerate. Judging a book by its cover, I at first just expected glossy photos of bespoke pre-war Lincolns, Cadillacs, Pierce-Arrows, and, of course, Packards, perhaps tied together with an overview of their most unique design cues, or a chronology of the firms responsible for their captivating coachwork. (And Detroit Steel Artists does indeed deliver on some impeccable imagery, highlighted by a few dozen pages of fantastic photography by veterans like Michael Furman, Bill Pack, and Scott Williamson.)
But the book dives so much deeper than you’d expect, making for, like Kilkenny said, one of the “most comprehensive reviews” of early American coachbuilding you’ve ever read.
Detroit Steel Artists eases you into that history with a superb introduction explaining the coachbuilding process, complete with original illustrations to help frame the type of work undertaken by firms like LeBaron, Dietrich, and Briggs. From there, Kilkenny delves into the lives of the personalities that established those firms, via an astounding number of firsthand accounts, interviews, and anecdotes. General Motors’ renowned, pioneering Art & Color design head Harley Earl gets his due, but much more word count is set aside for names casual readers may be less familiar with.
The cover of “Detroit Steel Artists: How Edsel Ford, Ray Dietrich, Tom Hibbard, and Ralph Roberts Turned Motor City into a Styling Mecca Before Harley Earl” Photo by Beaver’s Pond Press
“While all the early styling pioneers helped make [car] styling an important selling point, I think some of the most critical players were Edsel Ford, Ray Dietrich, Tom Hibbard, and Ralph Roberts,” says Kilkenny. “They were integral in moving styling from New York to Detroit. It’s a story that is not well-known.”
Kilkenny does more than just quote Dietrich, Hibbard, et al, however, furnishing the reader with these designers’ unpublished sketches; for those more interested in the business side of coachbuilding, at regular intervals, he runs down the companies’ financials, publishing copies of their balance sheets in the book’s appendices.
It’s not too far a stretch to say Detroit Steel Artists is an almost essential addition to the library of any pre-war-American-classic-car enthusiast; further than that, its breadth and depth have us excited about Kilkenny’s next work, Packard’s Rembrandts, which sounds like it might land a lot closer to the book he originally had in mind before he wrote this one. That volume is nearing completion, but before it goes to press, Kilkenny plans to make sure those lesser-known stories behind the industry’s pioneering coachbuilders, in Steel Artists, see a lot more eyes, and become a lot more well-known.
[Detroit Steel Artists is available on Amazon.com, but those looking to have the book shipped to Canada are asked to reach out to its publisher directly.]
Keyword: 'Detroit Steel Artists' is a near-essential book for pre-war American car fans