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DIETRICH, RAYMOND M. 1894-1980

AUTOMOBILE ARCHITECT

Artists

In the 1920s, for the first time, styling became a focus for mass-produced cars. During the preceding two decades body design had been a significant concern for only the most expensive of automobiles. Often a grandmarque auto company would manufacture a chassis—the frame and working parts—and then turn it over to a custom coach builder, who would construct the body with the particular styling features specified by the wealthy customer (he would have to be extremely well-to-do, since in 1920 a custom-built automobile cost between $12,000 and $15,000—the equivalent of $120,000 to $150,000 in 1995 figures). Among the great coach-building companies were Brewster, Healy, Judkins, and Derham, all of which enjoyed reputations for splendid work and all of which had moved into automobile-body construction and design when their original roles as producers of horse-drawn carnages had become obsolete. During the mid and late 1920s custom coach builders again felt the burdens of progress, as manufacturers of expensive cars moved toward mass production and toward setting up their own design departments or coach-building subsidiaries. One of the key figures in this transition was Raymond H. Dietrich, a genuine artist in the evolving automobile industry.

Early Life

Dietrich, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, found his first work as an engraver for the American Bank Note Company. In 1913 he signed on as a designing and drafting apprentice with Brewster, where he was joined in 1919 by another young designer, Thomas L. Hibbard, just back from the war in Europe. Although both draftsmen were pleased with their Brewster connection, they also felt that their creative ideas were being stifled by the company's rigid traditions, particularly those elevating metal craftsmen over draftsmen and designers. They complained to the company president and were fired as a result.

LeBaron Carrossiers

In 1920 Dietrich and Hibbard scraped together enough money to rent an office at 2 Columbus Circle in New York City. There they founded LeBaron Carrossiers, a suitably fancy name that the Francophile Hibbard had chosen. The idea behind the company was even more inventive—and more revolutionary—than its name, for LeBaron Carrossiers offered wealthy customers "automotive architecture," individual custom designs with complete plans and drawings that any good coach maker could then execute. Thus, Dietrich and Hibbard did not sell automobiles but instead their services as designers. Their plan proved enormously successful; they were soon providing auto designs to such celebrities as Gloria Swans on, Rudolph Valentino, and Florenz Ziegfeld. Unfortunately, however, on a 1923 trip to promote the company's services in Europe, Hibbard succumbed to his love for France, resigned his partnership in LeBaron Carrossiers, and joined another expatriate American, Howard "Dutch" Darrin, to form Hibbard & Darrin, which was to become one of the premier coach-designing firms on the Continent.

LeBaron, Inc

Hibbard's departure and the growing tendency among the major coach builders to incorporate Dietrich and Hibbard-like design departments within their own companies increased pressures for Dietrich. Although at present he had more work orders than he could easily handle, he clearly saw that the large coach builders with resident designers would soon cut into his business. He therefore worked out a merger between LeBaron Carrossiers and the Bridgeport Body Company to form LeBaron, Inc., a combination coach-building and design operation. At LeBaron, Dietrich honed the design principles he had been developing for years. For both safety and aesthetic reasons he lowered the roof and window levels of automobiles. He emphasized the horizontal flow between engine and passenger areas by using continuous molding that ran from the radiator, under the windows, and around the rear of the body. He added other detailing features—swept back front fenders, for example—that increased the appearance of length and the overall harmony of his designs. Dietrich was, in short, imposing a coherent style to automobile bodywork.

Edsel Ford and Catalogue Customizing

In 1923 Edsel Ford, who was attempting to develop the Ford Motor Company's newly acquired luxury car, the Lincoln, came up with a brilliant idea—catalogue customizing. He decided to choose a variety of attractive body styles, mass-produce perhaps twenty-five unfinished cars in each style, and then allow the customer for each car to specify the trim and finish he wanted. This procedure would substantially lower the price of the automobile—to around $5,000—but would ensure that the product remained a superb one. Since Edsel Ford had been pleased with work Dietrich had done for him in the past, he offered to bring LeBaron to Detroit under the sponsorship of a larger body-building company, the Murray Corporation. Dietrich was intrigued by the design possibilities of catalogue customizing, and in 1925, when his partners refused to move from New York City to Detroit, he resigned from LeBaron and, with Edsel Ford's help, founded Dietrich, Inc., a custom-design firm, near the Ford and Lincoln plants. During the next six years Dietrich continued producing individual designs for a few clients, but most of his work was done in catalogue customizing—for Lincoln, of course, but also for Packard, for the new Chrysler Imperial, for Franklin, and, in 1929, for Pierce-Arrow. Both his custom designs and his catalogue-customizing designs generated elegant automobiles.

Later Years

In the early 1930s the Great Depression devastated Dietrich's company, since the prosperous customers for whom catalogue customizing proved attractive were then disappearing. In 1932 his old friend Walter P. Chrysler offered him a design job in Chrysler Corporation's mass-production plant. Dietrich enjoyed some degree of success there, but when Walter P. Chrysler died in 1940, the designer was again without a job. He returned to custom work in a small way until 1949, when he established Ray Dietrich, Inc., in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Until his retirement in 1969 he supplied design advice for Checker, Lincoln, and Mercury and created the plans for an $87,000 parade car used by Presidents Harry'S Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Though Dietrich's major accomplishments occurred within a short eleven-year period, the automobile bodies he designed are regarded as among the finest in automobile history.