The 1938 Buick Y-Job concept car was designed by which GM styling chief?

The 1938 Buick Y-Job concept car was designed by GM styling chief Harley Earl.

Earl was General Motors’ first head of design and one of the automobile industry’s most influential stylists. The Y-Job was developed as a design and technology showcase rather than a production model, making it an early example of what later became known as a concept car. It displayed features such as hidden headlamps, power windows, flush door handles and wraparound bumpers.

The Y-Job was built on a Buick Super chassis and used a Buick straight-eight engine. Earl personally drove the car for several years, helping turn it into both a working design laboratory and a public demonstration of GM’s styling direction. A common mix-up is confusing Earl with Bill Mitchell, who succeeded him as GM’s styling chief in 1958; Raymond Loewy was an independent industrial designer, not the Y-Job’s GM designer.