Rediscovering GM’s Forgotten Design Legacy: The Barn Find That Changed Automotive History
It’s a cliché that some of the greatest treasures are found where you least expect them, but sometimes clichés prove true. In 2024, a chance trip to a rural estate sale in upstate New York uncovered a long-lost piece of General Motors’ design history—one that had been sitting quietly in a barn for decades, untouched and almost forgotten.
What began as a casual search for tractor parts turned into a remarkable rediscovery of the roots of modern automotive design.
A Bargain in the Barn
Josh Quick, a lifelong car enthusiast from New York and host of the YouTube channel Quick Speed Shop, headed to Conesus, a small town about 45 minutes south of Rochester. He wasn’t looking for history. His mission was straightforward: find antique tractor parts.
“I asked the guy, what do you want for all this stuff?” Quick recalled later in an interview with GM News. “He said, ‘two cases of Busch Light beer.’”
Quick happily agreed, thinking he had scored a once-in-a-lifetime haul of tractor components. Buried among the parts, however, was something he hadn’t expected—a thick binder filled with pencil-on-paper drawings of cars.
“I flipped it open, saw the first picture, and thought, that’s cool,” Quick said. The estate-sale host admitted he’d never seen the binder before and encouraged Quick to take it. “I just threw it in with the rest of the stuff,” Quick continued. “Honestly, I was more excited about the tractor parts. The binder sat in my truck for three or four days before I even thought about it again.
The Discovery Within
When curiosity got the better of him, Quick began paging through the collection. What he found astonished him: nearly 80 pages of original car sketches, each preserved in protective sleeves and dated between April and August of 1940.
The images depicted futuristic visions of Buick automobiles for the upcoming 1942 model year. Some were practical evolutions of Art Deco design, while others looked like something out of a comic book—sleek speedsters, exaggerated chrome grilles, even fantastical transportation scenes with monorails and airplanes in the background.
Quick immediately recognized some of the names signed at the bottom of the drawings. These weren’t amateurs doodling in notebooks. These were the first works of young designers who would go on to shape the future of the American automobile.
“The guys in that binder designed every single important car in Detroit from 1952 to 1974,” Quick said.
The Roots of GM Design
To understand the binder’s significance, you have to understand its origins. The sketches came from the Detroit Institute of Automobile Styling (DIAS), a little-known but highly influential school founded by General Motors in 1938.
The DIAS was the brainchild of Harley Earl, the legendary GM design chief who almost singlehandedly invented automotive styling as a discipline.
Born in 1893 in California, Earl began his career designing custom bodywork for Hollywood stars before joining GM in 1927. He quickly established the Art & Colour Section—deliberately spelled the British way for sophistication—which became the industry’s first in-house styling department. Until then, most car manufacturers treated design as an afterthought. Earl changed that forever.
But Earl had a problem: there were no schools dedicated to automotive design. If he wanted great designers, he would have to train them himself. That’s why he launched DIAS.
“The school served two purposes,” explained Christo Datini, manager of the GM Design Archive & Special Collections. “It trained the next generation of car designers and provided a direct recruitment pipeline for GM.”
Training the Legends
At first, DIAS was an in-person program, but after World War II it evolved into a correspondence course, marketed with slogans promising “scientifically planned” lessons and “inside information on the tricks of the trade.” Students submitted assignments by mail, which were critiqued by GM’s own designers.
The talent that flowed through DIAS would go on to define American automotive design for decades.
- Ned Nickles – The man behind the 1963 Buick Riviera, a car often considered one of the most beautiful American designs ever created.
- Ed Glowacke – Cadillac’s design chief during the iconic 1950s tailfin era.
- Clare MacKichan – The mind behind Chevrolet’s beloved “Tri-Five” sedans (1955–57) and the original Corvette.
But the influence didn’t stop at GM. Other signatures in Quick’s binder included Joe Oros, credited with shaping the Ford Mustang; Gene Bordinat, who became a Ford vice president; and Elwood Engel, who rose to Chrysler’s top design ranks.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that DIAS alumni designed nearly every important car to come out of Detroit between the early ’50s and the mid-’70s,” Quick observed.
The Sketches Themselves
The 80 or so drawings appear to be part of a single semester-long project at DIAS: conceptual proposals for the 1942 Buick lineup.
The early pages are simple, blueprint-like renderings of basic sedans. But as the students grew bolder, the artwork evolved into dazzling visions of the future. Chrome flowed across fenders, grilles stretched wider and lower, and cars began to look like moving sculptures.
Some sketches look remarkably practical, foreshadowing actual 1940s and ’50s models. Others verge on the fantastical, clearly inspired by airplanes, speedboats, and the optimism of the prewar age.
“They’re incredible sketches,” Datini said. “I love the little nuances, the added flair that showed these students were already thinking beyond the ordinary.
The Mystery of the Binder
How did these historically valuable drawings end up in a dusty barn in upstate New York?
The truth is, no one knows.
The deceased farm owner was known locally as a car enthusiast, but he had no direct ties to Detroit or GM. The binder itself carried the name of a now-defunct GM division that once built commercial trucks and buses, but it offered no further clues.
What makes the story even more remarkable is the condition of the sketches. Despite being stored for over 80 years in a barn, the pages are almost pristine.
“When we first saw them, I thought they had to be copies,” Datini admitted. “But they’re originals. It’s amazing they survived such an unconventional journey.
Back to GM
Once Quick realized what he had stumbled across, he reached out to GM directly. He eventually brought the binder to the company’s design headquarters in Warren, Michigan.
There, he and Datini carefully examined every page. GM soon acquired the entire collection, digitized it, and placed the originals into its archives, where they now sit alongside other historic materials from Harley Earl’s era.
For GM, the find was more than just a novelty—it was a missing puzzle piece in the story of how modern automotive design was born.
“General Motors Design has always been a training ground,” Datini said. “From Harley Earl’s first hires in 1927 to our current outreach and development programs, there’s a continuous line of mentorship and innovation. These drawings help us tell that story.
A Legacy Preserved
For Quick, the discovery was surreal. A YouTuber known for building hot rods and reviving old cars had stumbled across one of the most important design archives in GM’s history—paying for it with nothing more than cases of beer.
“It’s still a mystery how they survived,” Quick admitted. But thanks to his curiosity and sharp eye, a forgotten chapter of American automotive history has been preserved for future generations.
