Virgil Exner

(From Part 1….) Motorcar designers rarely become household names. Yet every kid in late-Fifties America knew of Virgil Exner. Through them, their parents knew of him, and bought his cars. To become as famous as Ex was by, say, 1958, a designer has to create something singular—something that heralds a new epoch. Almost alone among his contemporaries, Ex did just that. He was the “father of the tailfin.” And the tailfin (copyright Chrysler Corporation, 1956) was as recognized a symbol of late Fifties America as Elvis Presley.

Ex at Chrysler

Virgil, his son  recalled, “wasn’t exactly the most welcome person who ever showed up at Chrysler Corporation:

Predecessor stylists viewed him as a usurper. Dad set up a small studio and began working on his own, without a definite production goal but relatively free to come up with some good workouts. With these he hoped to point Chrysler in what he felt was the right direction.

Certainly past directions had been doubtful:

Dad called the Chrysler Town & Country a “lumber wagon.” He looked upon it as a car that “hadn’t been uncrated.” He liked woodies, but was very much a believer in the all-steel station wagon [pioneered by Plymouth in 1949]. Of course he thought the boxy 1949 Chrysler body styles were just awful. [Chief body engineer] Henry King was a good designer, but really his talents were kind of wasted through that era.

Changing the image

Exner’s first projects were a remarkable line of show cars, designed to prefigure production car styling. President Keller and Tex Colbert, who replaced Keller when K.T. became Chairman in late 1950, had always liked Chrysler’s clean-lined prewar idea cars, the Thunderbolt and Newport. They wanted more of them. “Old K.T.” is often blamed for Chrysler’s boxy look in the early 1950s. In fact, he was acutely aware of, and meant to change, this styling disadvantage.

In 1949, Keller had asked Pininfarina to explore future styling directions with a trim four-door sedan on a New Yorker wheelbase. Later, in 1951, Ghia in Turin produced the Plymouth XX500 special. Virgil, Jr. told this writer that the XX500 “was brought over by Ghia to show Chrysler their ability and craftsmanship. It was pretty dumpy, but it started the whole idea in Dad’s mind that they could build real experimental cars, as opposed to mock-ups.”

Chrysler engineer Fred Zeder, a fan of Exner’s, remarked: “We like to see just how these ideas work out in an actual, operating automobile.” Rival companies “build dream cars which quite obviously couldn’t be produced on an assembly line.” Exner chose Ghia over Pininfarina because Ghia could produce one-offs at modest cost. His first Ghia special, the K310, cost only $10,000, an astonishingly low figure, even then.

The Ghia-Chryslers

A classic car enthusiast and a student of world industrial design, Exner brought a sophisticated approach to Chrysler styling. He admired what he called the “Italian Simplistic School.” Italian designs “were thoroughly modern, with subtly rounded shapes and sharp accents indicative of genuine character.”

While Exner’s show cars were influenced and built by Ghia, most of them began life on his own drawing board. The K310 (K for Keller, 310 for its supposed horsepower) seriously influenced production design, notably the 1955 Imperial–as did its convertible counterpart, the C200.

Successor models were the Ghia Special, GS1 and d’Elegance. Here Exner introduced bold, squared-off grilles and combination bumper-grilles that were later seen in production cars. (Incidentally, the GS1 was evolved by Ghia into the VW Karmann Ghia—independent of Exner, of course, downsized, and minus GS1’s huge egg-crate grille).

Shown at Chrysler dealerships nationwide, the K310 and its successors sparked new interest in Chrysler design. Exner then began to contribute to production car styling. His influence on the restyled 1953-54s was slight, though he did spark more shapely, rounded forms than those of 1949-52.

The show cars that directly led to Exner’s glory years were the Parade Phaetons. Three 1952 Crown Imperials with production front clips were mounted on extended, 147 1/2-inch wheelbase chassis. Later they were updated with 1955-56 styling. Based on clay models from Exner’s studio, they featured a strong character moulding along the beltline, a rear fender “kick-up,” and big, open wheel wells. Even Exner didn’t anticipate the influence these cars would have–owing in part to events beyond his control.

Salvaging Chrysler

Chrysler Corporate sales in 1953-54 were grim. Four years of dull styling, coupled with a production blitz and heavy dealer discounting by GM and Ford, left Chrysler in a slump. By 1952, Ford had regained second place in American car production for the first time since the 1930s. In early 1953, Keller asked Exner’s opinion about the 1955 models then aborning. Exner had a look and replied in one word: “Lousy.”

“K.T. Keller kind of liked that,” Virgil, Jr. remembered, “since he was quite a strong character. So he said to my Dad: ‘Okay, you put it together—you have eighteen months.’ Dad swiped stuff off the parade phaetons and did manage to put the ‘55 line together in time. He did it with a tiny group of only seventeen people, including the modelers and four or five designers.”

(Virgil, Jr. refers here to the Imperial, Chrysler and DeSoto. The 1955 Dodge and Plymouth, although new, were not based on the Parade Phaetons, but designed separately by Henry King and Exner associate Maury Baldwin. Exner signed off on them too, of course. He had now become chief of Chrysler design.)

The “Forward Look”

The outcome of all this was the dramatically restyled 1955 model line. Almost overnight, they altered Chrysler history.

The most obvious descendant of the Parade Phaetons was the 1955 Imperial, one of the classic designs of the Fifties: uncluttered and understated, except for the gaudy ornaments on hood and deck, and the “gunsight” taillights, a throwback to the K310.

Chryslers had their own look, with huge “Twin Tower” taillights and smaller grilles surmounting a horizontal bar up front. DeSoto kept its established toothy grille, topped by an ornate bonnet badge. Its most radical feature was a “gullwing” dashboard, housing instruments and controls under the steering wheel and a glovebox/radio speaker at right.

Taking the lead

The 1955 Dodge and Plymouth also saw remarkable improvement, with longer, cleaner lines and curved body sides. Vastly altered, they didn’t seem related to their predecessors. Both enjoyed enormous buyer approval. All five makes were successful: Chrysler Corporation recorded the highest dollar volume and unit sales in its history, with a seventeen percent slice of ‘55 output compared to only thirteen in 1954.

In retrospect, there’s no doubt that the 1955 “Forward Look” Chrysler products were among the best American designs of their decade. Without the garish two- and three-tone paint jobs so many fashionably wore, they still look clean and well balanced today.

These were the cars which began to wrest the design leadership that had belonged to General Motors since the late 1920s. By 1957, Chrysler held one-fifth of the market and GM was hastening to keep pace. So was everybody else. It must have galled Raymond Loewy to see his famous coupes, now called Studebaker Hawks, sprout tailfins in a hasty attempt to ape Exner.

Birth of the tailfin

Virgil Exner had become a vice president, with a design staff of over 300 and a name known nationwide. His interest in the tailfin, the feature for which he was best known, became evident on the 1956 models. His son thought he was inspired by the Ghia Gilda, a dramatic fastback which was mainly one long fin. Also influential were the Alfa Romeo BAT and Chrysler’s own Dart show car.

“He was a staunch believer in fins,” Virgil Jr. continued:

The idea was to get some poise at the rear of the car–to get off of soft, rounded back ends, to get some lightness to the car. Fins were a way to do it aesthetically, and were genuinely functional. They ran tests at Chrysler and without trying to rationalize, they did work. They moved the centre of air pressure back, a little closer to the centre of gravity, provided more inherent directional stability. True, the effects weren’t much evident below 80 mph! It wasn’t a pure style, but it was functional. Dad always tried to make his tailfins as simple as possible, as opposed, say, to the 1959 “batwing” Chevrolet.”

Flite-Sweep styling

The best of Exner’s finned creations were the first “Flite-Sweep” models of 1957-58, particularly the simple, dramatic Chryslers. The most important thing about them was their revolutionary lowness, which was no accident. Exner had demanded that they stand five inches lower than the ‘56s. This was a huge reduction.

Chrysler engineers said it couldn’t be done. They did it anyway, with the help of such space saving innovations as 14-inch wheels, thin-section air cleaners, pre-formed headliners and (importantly) torsion bar front suspension.

With acres of glass, low beltlines and slim roof pillars, Flite-Sweeps were unchallenged by any rival and prefigured the shape of American cars for the next half decade. Coupled with such innovations as “Torsion-Aire” ride, TorqueFlite automatic and potent V-8 engines, they represented a pinnacle, a company reborn. They were Virgil Exner’s finest hour.

But time is always running. In mid-1956, as the Flite-Sweeps were about to be introduced, forty-seven-year-old Virgil Exner suffered a massive heart attack. Colbert brought in Bill Schmidt, late of Studebaker-Packard, as his temporary replacement. Ex recovered and returned to work a year later. But his post-1958 designs lacked the chiselled smoothness and drama of their predecessors, and sometimes just looked odd.

Tailfins grew higher, clumsier and less functional; Ex’s penchant for classic era features led to “toilet seat” spare tires on rear decks and “freestanding” headlamps, which on cars like the Imperial only looked bizarre. He did win a design award for his 1960 Plymouth Valiant and its clone, the ‘61 Dodge Lancer—Chrysler’s first compacts. But after all, he had always preferred light cars.

“Plucked chickens”

The last line of full-size Chrysler products designed completely under Exner came in 1962. It was a very mixed bag. The Chryslers were basically ‘61 models shorn of fins—Ex called them “plucked chickens.” Dodges and Plymouths emphasized his long bonnet/short deck concepts, but they were prematurely downsized, stubby in appearance. Sales dropped, overcome by full-size competition from GM and Ford.

Meanwhile Chrysler Corporation was suffering political upheavals and financial scandals. Shortly after the ascension of President Lynn Townsend in mid-1961, Elwood Engel replaced Exner as vice president of styling. By the early Sixties, GM styling was again pacing the industry.

Exner, who closely influenced the, chunky, chiselled 1963-64 models, remained a styling consultant through 1964. But it was clear that his Chrysler career was winding down.

Trail’s end

In 1961 Virgil joined his son in a private design firm, Virgil M. Exner Inc., in Birmingham, Michigan. Here he produced artwork for an Esquire project: three classic revivals, the Duesenberg II, Stutz Blackhawk and Mercer Cobra. Exner Inc. also engaged in automotive projects for U.S. Steel and Dow Chemical. Ghia’s Selene II, the Renault Caravelle and Bugatti Type 101 bore traces of his hand.

Virgil Max Exner died in 1973, leaving a legacy of imagination and innovation. Not only was he one of the few car stylists known broadly in America. He was the first to topple General Motors as Detroit’s styling leader. In a very real sense, too, Ex had saved Chrysler in the mid-Fifties. His cars were among the last that could trace their shape to a single gifted individual.

Bibliography

Richard M. Langworth: Chrysler and Imperial: The Postwar Years, 1976; Studebaker: The Postwar Years, 1979; Encyclopedia of American Cars 1930-1980, 1984. With Jan P. Norbye The Complete History of Chrysler Corporation: 1924-1985, 1985. Michael Lamm and David Holls: A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design, 1996. Author’s interviews: Maury Baldwin, Robert E. Bourke, Gordon M. Buehrig, Virgil M. Exner, Virgil Exner Jr., Eugene Hardig, Raymond Loewy, John Reinhart.

The great designers

“Virgil Exner, Part 1,  Studebaker: How Ex Marked His Spot,” 2024.

“Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous,” 2022.

“The Greatness of Alex Tremulis,” Part 1 of a three-part article, 2020.

“‘All the Luck’—Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017.

“Indie Auto: Did Detroit Give Us the Dinosaurs?” 2023.

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” 2019.

A name we all knew

Motorcar designers rarely become household names. Harley Earl, who invented the styling profession at General Motors in the 1920s, was better known after he retired. His successor, Bill Mitchell, more widely recognized, loved the limelight. He was always ready to be photographed riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle in his chrome leather jacket.

Pininfarina’s name got round in America because it appeared on everything from Nashes to Ferraris, but relatively few knew of Nuccio Bertone, or even, later, Giorgio Giugiaro. The name Raymond Loewy was known to some through his gifted self-promotion. But Howard Darrin—similarly talented—was more famous as a 1930s custom body builder than a 1950s car designer.

Yet every kid in late-Fifties America knew of Virgil Exner. Through them, their parents knew of him, and bought his cars. To become as famous as Ex was by, say, 1958, a designer has to create something singular—something that heralds a new epoch. Almost alone among his contemporaries, Ex did just that. He was the “father of the tailfin.” And the tailfin (copyright Chrysler Corporation, 1956) was as recognized a symbol of late Fifties America as Elvis Presley.

Young Virgil

Like many automotive designers, Exner grew up with cars in his blood, transfused from the places he frequented. He was born and immediately adopted by German-American parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1909. Barely 17, he enrolled at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, near the busy factories of Studebaker. He dropped out of university for lack of money after 2 1/2 years and applied for work at a local firm, Advertising Artists, which produced Studebaker catalogues.

Michael Lamm and David Holls, in their seminal book, A Century of Automotive Style, tell us that Exner began by painting picture backgrounds: “But when his boss noticed how good he was, he gave Ex the task of illustrating Studebaker cars and trucks…. He also developed a knack for sculpting in clay, all of which later helped him as a car designer.”

In 1934, hearing about Harley Earl’s Art & Colour Studio at GM, Ex hied to Detroit and his first design position, at Frank Hershey’s Pontiac department. An early assignment was contributing to the visual unity of 1935 Pontiacs with the iconic “Silver Streak.” This was a broad band of grooved bright metal that ran from the grille down the hood and repeated on the deck. The Silver Streak was a Pontiac hallmark through 1956. When Frank Hershey was transferred to Opel in 1937, Exner became Pontiac’s chief stylist. But by that time he was already being courted by the famous Franco-American industrial designer, Raymond Loewy.

Ex meets Ray

Loewy, who had secured the Studebaker account in 1936, was in serious need for design talent. His eye soon lit on Virgil Exner. Harley Earl liked and admired Ex and wanted him to stay at GM. But Loewy offered a big salary increase and a New York location. Virgil moved his family to Long Island, only to find himself back in familiar South Bend in 1941, after Studebaker insisted that Loewy locate his design team at its factory.

In Indiana, Exner and clay modeler Frank Ahlroth were soon joined by Robert Bourke, who would later create Studebaker’s famous 1953 “Loewy coupe.” Following Pearl Harbor, Studebaker designers and engineers were harnessed to the war effort. Exner, Bourke and Ahlroth found themselves designing air-cooled turbocharged aircraft engines. In their spare time, the trio worked on ideas for the eventual postwar Studebakers. Meanwhile, as Bourke remembered, “Raymond Loewy was busy convincing management to accept these radical designs for the postwar era.”

“Weight is the Enemy”

Given the size of the design department and the minimal time for cars, Exner’s group had revolutionary ideas. Integral fenders were unheard of in those days. So were vast areas of curved glass, or doors cut into the roof. Loewy detested the use of chrome as embellishment. He preferred slim, tapered shapes, and practical devices like glass or clear plastic headlamp covers to improve streamlining.

Loewy also preached lightness, warning of the cost of excess weight in fuel consumption and performance. Throughout the studio, on walls, floors and ceilings, he posted signs reading: WEIGHT IS THE ENEMY.

Loewy told this writer: “I tried to convince management that there existed among Americans a segment, profitable to Studebaker, that could not find the kind of car they wanted among GM, Ford and Chrysler offerings. What these consumers wanted was a sleeker, compact automobile with European-type roadability and good acceleration.” A leading newspaper, he added, “credited me with being first to use the word ‘compact.’”

Raymond Loewy in those years was no longer a hands-on designer. Having brought his company to prominence, he preferred now to hire good talent, supervise their work, approve what they produced, and sell it to clients. Thus Loewy was rarely at South Bend. Virgil Exner became his point-man with Studebaker management. Inevitably, an antipathy developed between Loewy and Exner—and, more seriously, between Loewy and Studebaker chief engineer Roy Cole, a stolid Midwesterner who had never cared for the flamboyant Frenchman.

A certain discontent

Ex, who was doing a lot of the work, easily bought Cole’s argument that Loewy was more figurehead than contributor. “The problem was basically a disagreement in philosophy,” the evenhanded Bob Bourke remembered:

Ex felt that a man was either a designer or a promoter, but not both. To make matters worse, he felt Loewy received all the credit from management and the public.

Although I understood Ex’s viewpoint, I still held R.L. in high regard. I recognized the necessity of being a good salesman in this profession. Mr. Loewy also had a great “eye.” While he may not have created a certain line or contour, he knew instinctively when a designer had better than average talent and drive, and he would always bring out the best that designer had to offer the client.

While Ex and Cole nursed discontent, the Loewy team began evolving postwar Studebakers. They began slowly, but with more urgency as the war neared its end. More personnel came on board. Exner found himself heading a distinguished circle: Bourke, Gordon Buehrig, Holden Koto, Ted Brennan, John Cuccio, John Reinhart, Vince Gardner and Jack Aldrich.

Reinhart would later design the image-shattering 1951 Packards and direct styling for the 1956 Continental Mark II. Gardner would contribute to the Mark II and other Ford designs. Buehrig was noted for his rakish prewar Auburns and Cords. Koto would aid Bourke on Studebakers through the ‘53, and he and Bourke freelanced the front clip of the ‘49 Ford. Loewy considered this team the best in the industry.

Studebaker’s radical postwar plans

The 1947 Studebakers were the first all-new designs from a prewar car company. They were conceived by the Loewy Studios under Virgil Exner. As early as 1942, they had settled on a full-width body rather than freestanding fenders. Later they integrated the fenders with the body sides, but left enough of a bulge to avoid a slab-sided appearance. They developed a curved one-piece windshield; a wrap-around backlight (for what became the 1947-52 Starlight coupe) and a long, tapered rear deck. Although many rival companies developed similar ideas, Studebaker put them into production at years before anyone else.

The break between Raymond Loewy and his ambitious young designer came in the spring of 1944. As Exner recalled, one morning Roy Cole walked into his office, accompanied by Studebaker President Harold Vance. Cole had a proposal. Would Ex undertake secretly to design a production car, independent of the Loewy Studios?

He didn’t trust Loewy to come up with anything practical, Cole explained, but couldn’t prove he was right without competition. Vance nodded agreement, but cautioned that Ex would have to work on his own time at home. Neither he nor Cole were willing at that point to risk confrontation with Loewy, who was still under contract.

Exner told this writer that he didn’t take much persuading:

I agreed to start immediately. I cleared out one of my bedrooms at home and they sent me an eight-foot drafting board. Then we went into my basement, and they built me a quarter-scale clay modeling table. Eugene Hardig, who was then chief of chassis drafting, came out every day…. We worked on seating and chassis layouts…. This lasted about three to four months. On completion the rival design was still a pretty good secret, even at Studebaker.

Ex knew that his actions would seal his fate with Loewy, but he was young and ambitious, determined to show what he could do. Many can imagine how he felt, working against tight deadlines at home, visions of a revolutionary new car dancing in his head.

Dimensional shuffle

A curious error now came to Exner’s assistance. The initial dimensions Cole gave him for the new Studebaker Champion, like those handed to the Loewy team, were impractical. They called for a wheelbase of only 110 inches and a width of just 67 inches–much too small for a “family car.”

Ex remembered: “Roy Cole had a thing: His philosophy was that a car cost so much a pound. He stuck to that rigidly, and these were the dimensions he laid down. They were a little tough to work with.” That was an understatement. Cole’s proposed chassis was too narrow, the car too short, the entire geometry unworkable.

Exner pleaded for more generous dimensions. Surely they could allow 70 inches of width and open the Champion wheelbase to 113? (It expanded to 120 inches on the senior Commander, 124 on the stretched-out Land Cruiser.) Anxious to please his favorite stylist, Cole relented. Exner continues:

We then built an all-new wooden mock-up. The body drawings were simply opened up and a three-inch strip put down the center without changing the profile, and the wheels were moved back. Then the front end looked too short [so] I convinced Mr. Cole that we should add three inches to the fenders and two inches to the hood.

An inch here, an inch there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real changes. There was one other factor: Roy Cole didn’t bother to advise the competition. The “official” Loewy Studios team, still ostensibly under Exner, laboured on with a foreordained loser—“sort of an underhanded deal on the part of Cole,” Bob Bourke recalled…

because he was trying to get Loewy out of there. We did two full-sized plaster automobiles, and when management viewed them, they said they were just too narrow. In a matter of a week, we cut them right down the middle and expanded them out to where the Exner jobs were, but by then the Exner model was being tooled for production.

The break with Loewy

When Studebaker selected Exner’s rival model, Loewy exploded, jumped aboard the Twentieth Century Limited (which made him no happier because the train was designed by his arch rival Henry Dreyfus), and headed in high dudgeon for South Bend. There he fired Exner for disloyalty and insubordination. This had been foreseen: Ex was immediately rehired by Roy Cole as chief body engineer.

From a study of his design ideas and subsequent career, as well as the prototypes, it is virtually certain that the high hood and complicated stainless steel grille were Exner contributions to the original Loewy shapes. These were in some contrast to Loewy’s preferred sloping hood and minimal chrome. But Exner’s idea was probably more in keeping with contemporary tastes. “Ex favoured this type of hood more than I did,” Bourke said. “I was equally to blame, however, as I had done many studies for Ex along these lines.”

With Exner out, Bob Bourke became the head of the Loewy Studios at Studebaker. Through Roy Cole, Exner enjoyed job security, competing (unsuccessfully) with the Loewy team for the 1950-51 facelift with its famous “bullet-nose.” But Ex’s disloyalty to Loewy, and moreover to the likeable Bourke, did not endear him to many.

Nearing retirement, Cole realized he couldn’t protect Exner forever, and canvassed industry friends in need of a stylist. He found a berth at Ford, and the Exner family was about to move to Dearborn when Ford signed a design contract with George Walker. Cole then called his friend K.T. Keller, President of Chrysler. The rest, as they say, is history.

Continued in Part 2…

Related reading

“Why Studebaker Failed,” 2020.

“Why Packard Failed,” 2022.

“‘All the Luck’—Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017.

“Indie Auto: Did Detroit Give Us the Dinosaurs?” 2023.

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” 2019.

First published as “The Teague I Knew” in The Packard Cormorant, 2023.  A longer version was published in The Automobile (UK), January 2024. The quote below is from “Horatius at the Bridge” in Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

“And how can man die better than facing fearful odds…”

Franklin, Michigan, April 1971— “Don’t touch it!”

On the garage floor next to a huge Pope-Toledo, a tiny electric compressor was going chuffa-chuffa-chuffa, inflating a tire on this enormous touring car. Richard Arthur Teague, Vice President for Design of American Motors, was on his knees watching it.

“Isn’t it neat?” Dick enthused. “Found it at a hardware store. Look at it go!”

“Yeah, Dick,” I said, “and it’ll be about finished in a week or so.”

I finally tore him away, but I’d no sooner begun asking how he planned to style AMC out of its latest predicament than he lunged into a cardboard box and began hauling out Packard literature.

He held up a bound volume of the ultra-rare Packard Magazine: “Did you ever see one of these before?” He’d rescued the trove from destruction at the East Grand Boulevard factory during Packard’s last days in Detroit.

When tumbrels rolled

“Good Lord, it was awful,” Dick remembered. “There were only a few of us left, they were emptying the factory.

Every hour the tumbrels would roll—you know, like the French Revolution—hauling that aristocratic heritage to the dump. I finally hired a truck, loaded as much of it as I could, and drove it out of there.”

Dick was a Packard stylist from 1951 to the consolidation at South Bend in 1956. His last production effort was the 1957 “Packardbaker,” where he cleverly gave a Studebaker body a family resemblance to the “real” 1956 Packards. Ironically it was Studebaker, which had dragged Packard down, that survived longer.

Most car designers in those days—I don’t know what they do now, click computer keys?—passionately loved the automobile. Most of them could recite automotive history and recall the great names of the industry, from hardboiled executives to racing drivers.

But Dick Teague was unique. He was widely read, brought up to appreciate everything on wheels, devoted to history and restoration. The fabulous 1904 Packard Model L at the Henry Ford Museum, originator of the radiator shape he applied to the last prototypes, was Dick’s car.

His collection ran from his Pope-Toledo to a 1961 Ferrari Berlinetta and the AMX III showcar. He placed his library at the disposal of Automobile Quarterly for our book, Packard; A History of the Motorcar and the Company.

“More rivals than a big city tomcat”

His background wasn’t always cars. A prodigy at five, Dick had played Dixie Duval, the young girl in a low-grade spin-off of Hal Roach’s “Little Rascals.”

A year later he’d lost his right eye in a car accident, and with it his depth perception. (He used to appall us by removing and juggling his glass eye or taping it with a pencil.)

His disability never affected his talent. He grew up sketching cars and airplanes. During the Second World War, ineligible for the draft, he served as a tech artist for Northrop Aviation.

Afterwards Dick joined the industrial design firm E.H. Daniels, who had a contract with a fledgling car company, Kaiser-Frazer.

It seemed a plum of a job, since K-F had barrels of cash and a clean-slate design program, unburdened by prewar “baggage” like the other manufacturers.

The problem was that they hired lots of competing stylists, such as Dutch Darrin and Brooks Stevens, even a company that made car seats. “We had more rivals than a big city tomcat,” Dick remembered.

Then in 1948, General Motors came to L.A. looking for artists, interviewed fifteen of them, and chose Dick Teague. He headed for Detroit, where he contributed to the aircraft-inspired 1949 Oldsmobile.

There he met and married Marian, the love of his life, and reeled off the odd freelance project. Many first heard of Dick for the “modern Mercer” he conceived for Road & Track in 1951. It was the best cover R&T had yet published—Dick’s revival of greatest sports car of its era, the T-head Raceabout.

Packard highs and lows

The Packard Cormorant records all he did for Packard, so it isn’t necessary to repeat that here. But no car lover can fail to appreciate the originality of Dick’s mind.

It was he who first reasoned: why does a backlight have to slant back? Why not let it slant forward, eliminating glare, affording rain protection, even sliding down for ventilation? That idea (less the sliding feature) appeared on Dick’s 1953 Balboa showcar, and was later swiped (with the sliding feature) by Lincoln and Mercury.

Many of us know his most famous story, from what he called his “last days in the bunker,” when the “tumbrels rolled” for “Black Bess.”

That was the 1957 Packard prototype (complete with the slant-back rear window). Dick said it was “made with a cold soldering iron and a ball peen hammer…a very spartan mule.”

One day, Engineering Vice President Herb Misch said, “Find it,” and Dick brought it up to a little showroom.

“I can’t do it myself,” Misch said, “so I’m going to make you the executioner. Cut the thing up…it’s all over.” Let Dick himself finish the tale:

“My God, Red, what have you done?”

So I called Rex Lux, an old welder in the studio, who had been around since the cornerstone. There were two or three other cars in the studio, including another black one, a Clipper. I said, “Okay, it’s official, cut the black one up.”

Red had been there since he was a kid and was hanging on by his thumbnails. I came back around 4 p.m. and he was just finishing. The pieces were lying all around like a bomb had gone off.

It was probably the dirtiest trick I ever played but I said: “My God, Red, what have you done? Not this one, man—the one over in the corner!”

The poor guy had to have had a strong heart, because if he didn’t, he would have died right there. His face drained, and when I told him I was just kidding he chased me around the room. You’ve got to have a sense of humor in this business.

With Packard gone, Dick went to Chrysler: “the worst year of my life.” He refused to talk about it—“too painful to remember.” He worked awhile for his old Packard boss Bill Schmidt, then an independent consultant.

In 1960 American Motors design chief Edmund Anderson asked him to come aboard as a stylist, and Dick joyfully signed on with another company headed for the bunker. But this time he put up an extended fight.

“Ruddy ordnance vehicle”

Dick’s first task was to restyle the 1961-63 Rambler American: “You remember, that dumpy thing with the concave body side molding? An English designer had been hired around the same time. ‘My God, Dick,’ he said to me, ‘it looks like a ruddy ordnance vehicle.’ It did, too!”

Dick’s 1964 replacementl was a quantum leap forward—the first Rambler American that could honestly be called good looking.

When Ed Anderson retired, Dick was named to replace him. He started with projects already on the books, like the 1965-67 Marlin, a hasty attempt to ape the Big Three “glassbacks.” But once he could produce ground-up designs, Dick created sleek, flowing shapes, the diametric opposite of conventional Detroit cars.

From a styling standpoint, the 1968 Javelin, his answer to the Mustang and Camaro, bested both of them. Then, cutting a foot off the Javelin wheelbase, he created the AMX, more of a sports car than anything in Detroit other than the Corvette.

When I joined Automobile Quarterly in 1970, Dick was at his apogee. Every time AMC was counted out, he would reach into his bag of talent and produce Salvation.

In 1970 it was the Hornet, a clean-limbed compact, and the Gremlin subcompact, which Dick made by cutting off the Hornet’s back end. It was a desperate tactic, but it worked. The Gremlin sold like nickel hot dogs because with V8 power it wasn’t your typical buzz-box.

“Elephant foreskins”

The 1975 Matador coupe was his purest work. Elegant and smoothly integrated, it looked like 100 mph standing still. I visited him that year driving a new Granada from Ford’s press fleet.

“Good grief,” Dick said, gesturing toward its severe body creases. “Look at all that tortured sheet metal.” Then, pointing to the Matador in his driveway: “Why don’t you get a real car?”

I promised him I’d borrow a Matador as soon as I was back in the graces of our friend John Conde, AMC’s public relations manager.

A few days before, I’d met John at AMC headquarters, where Dick’s newest creation, the Pacer, was on a turntable, observed by a host of component salesmen and other supplicants. I said it was cute.

“What? Just look at that ugly toad,” John fumed, as heads turned. “One door wider than the other…all that glass…doors full of air. I told Teague a hundred times, that little troll won’t do!”

I repeated this to Dick, knowing he’d laugh—he took neither himself nor anyone else too seriously. Actually, he’d been betrayed by the production engineers. Had GM with its resources handled Pacer engineering, “the first wide small car” would have been a greater success.

Nearing retirement in 1985, Teague was getting bored. The government was in the design business big-time now, and controlled everything.

“What are you doing today?” I asked him once. “Government crash tests,” he quipped. “That’s what we’re reduced to. Every day we swing the pendulum at our bumpers, extended out from the body with elephant foreskins.” I cracked up, and he said: “Well, what would you call them?”

“J. Pierpont Teague” 

In retirement Dick was celebrated and in demand everywhere. We expected him to be around a long time, to regale us with his memories.

But then from his family, word began to filter that Dick was ill, and that cancer was one bunker from which he wouldn’t emerge, though as usual he’d fight like hell before he gave up.

It made no difference to his enthusiasms. Two weeks before he died, he phoned me to say his last design—a “1992 Packard”—would be on its way for use in The Packard Cormorant. By then his family said Dick was “functional” only twenty minutes a day.

Yet a week after he died his friend Ken Eberts, the great automotive artist, sent it along: “Dick wanted you to have this. He asked me to help finish it, but it is entirely his concept. I think it is his last design.”

Unlike many in his profession, Dick was never proprietorial about his work, quick to credit his colleagues, always ready to lighten up. When worshipful Packard folk would praise his famous 1955-56 “cathedral” taillights, Dick would say:

“Yeah, I was a big hero—J. Pierpont Teague. They raised my salary five dollars, which in those days was a great thing.” (Actually, it was rather more than that, but such was the Teague humor.)

And that’s what I remember most about my dear friend, who died far too young, for he still had so much to give. Everybody who knew Dick loved him. That’s a very large crowd. I’m proud to be a member of it.

More on Packard and its cars

“One Brief Shining Moment: Packard and Its 1929-30 Speedster,” 2023.

“Queen Mary: We Love Our 1950 Packard Eight Club Sedan,” 2022.

“Why Packard Failed,” Part 1 and Part 2, 2022.

“Brooks Stevens: The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous,” 2022.

“The Packard Magazine: Ne Plus Ultra of Automotive House Organs,” Part 1 and Part 2, 2021.

“The Packard Adventures of Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” 2017.

Awhile back Hemmings Motor News reposted my article on Brooks Stevens, with a gratuitous opinion: “Perhaps Langworth’s tendency toward purple prose in this profile of Brooks Stevens in Special Interest Autos #71, October 1982, is appropriate, given the picture he paints of the legendary designer.” Nice to be remembered, but, er, Hemmings paid only for first rights and is therefore in copyright violation.

An old editor at SIA wrote: “Nothing purple—it reads like an essay in The New Yorker.” (Ah, if only Hemmings paid New Yorker rates!)  Another colleague wrote: “Not purple, maybe faint mauve.” A third: “Ugh, I can’t read it. The prose is too purple for me. They really think the Excalibur J can run with a Jaguar XK120?” But Tony Stevens wrote: “As the current owner of the first Excalibur J, I can attest that it can run competitively with an XK120. Right, Tony! The XK120 was a great car—but the youngsters have swallowed too much purple prose about it.

Herewith I republish my purple-mauve piece on my late friend Brooks Stevens. Readers may judge for themselves.

“The judgment of the historian”

“You’ll have to resolve the conflict between Dutch Darrin and Kip Stevens,” I was told after being assigned my first automotive article assignment, on Kaiser-Frazer, in 1970. The origins of the landmark 1951 Kaiser were at the time still unclear. Both Darrin and Stevens claimed it. (See “Kaiser Capers.”) Neither was complimentary in describing the efforts of the other. “It might be best not to press the matter,” a friend warned. The publisher disagreed: “Hear both sides and make the judgment of the historian.”

I didn’t know I was a historian! But I wrote to Stevens at his studio near Milwaukee and said in effect, “Tell me everything you remember about the 1951 Kaiser.”

By return mail came a large white folder with gilt lettering, containing a thick pile of photographs and a long, detailed letter documenting Brooks “Kip” Stevens’ role as a design consultant to Kaiser-Frazer. Within a year we’d met, and our friendship withstood the “judgment of the historian,” which appeared in Last Onslaught on Detroit in 1975. (For used copies search on bookfinder.com.)

The judgment did not satisfy Kip, and in turn produced another white and gilt folder with further documentation. On this subject it would be accurate to say that we had differences but not misunderstandings. Cordiality never suffered, for Stevens was a master of cordiality.

Stevens as I knew him

He was a tall, good looking man who belied his age, whose appearance and demeanor reflected what Cole Porter called High Society. For Stevens there was only one way to fly to Paris: Concorde. And one way to get to England: first class on the QE2. His personal tastes reflected similar standards, producing an aura of refined elegance. He took pains about everything. Meeting him, people were impressed but never overawed, because he was so natural, so full of courtesy and fun.

It was not hard to gain Kip’s acquaintance, whether you were a mechanic in overalls or the President of General Motors. Along with an inborn civility and an interest in others went an all-encompassing love for cars, an encyclopedic knowledge, and a streak of nihilism.

Stevens once invited my friend Bill Tilden to Wisconsin to drive his Henry J-based sports car, the Excalibur J, at Elkhart Lake. Brooks himself drove there in his personal Excalibur. This produced a helicopter-assisted roadblock of the rambunctious designer. It seemed he had violated most Wisconsin road ordinances plus several they hadn’t thought of yet.

Picture Brooks, trailing a silk scarf, driving a very loud open sports car with what the British call “assurance.” Picture next an army of gendarmerie, including aircraft. Failing to catch him in their cruisers, they block the road ahead. Now picture the nearest constable (seven feet tall as they all are). Jerking his thumb at the Excalibur’s sartorially splendid driver, he shouts: YOU—OUT! Kip paid his fine. It was substantial.

A truly lovely man

He had vast generosity, which did not always function in his favor. One press night at the New York Automobile Show, Kip arrived at René and Maurice Dreyfus’ famous automotive watering hole, “Le Chanteclair,” with a large retinue of admirers. The brothers Dreyfus were hardpressed to seat such a large assembly. They eventually did, at a long table with Brooks as centerpiece. Here he held forth for three hours to his impromptu court.

Le Chanteclair was never the place for a cheap meal. The bill came, for what I recall was uncomfortably close to a thousand 1974 dollars. Brooks quietly laid down his American Express card. Those who had no intention of socking him with that tab surreptitiously handed him cash, but a good half the company didn’t bother. There was no sign that our host was in the least disappointed: the measure of a man who spared no expense for the pleasure of an evening among friends, provided your description of “friends” is fairly elastic.

Stevens triumphs

I once stole a line from Schlitz and called Brooks, to his great delight, “The Seer Who Made Milwaukee Famous.” He was one of the ten charter Fellows of the Industrial Design Society of America. To the automotive trade he brought impeccable credentials. Ultimately he would contribute designs to over 40 makes of car. One of his earliest associations was with Willys-Overland, during and after World War II. He conceived of Willys’ most interesting products: the the first all-steel station wagon (1946); and the 1948-51 Jeepster, the world’s last production touring car.

A contributor to Kaiser-Frazer from almost the outset of that venture, Brooks proposed the first practical facelifts for the plug-ugly 1947-48 models, including wagons and hardtops, which they desperately needed but rejected.

Management didn’t take his advice, but assigned him a design competition for the new-generation 1951 Kaiser. It is the consensus today that the basic shape selected was Darrin’s, but the contest was not winner-take-all (see Kaiser photo above). Kip was simultaneously busy on a score of accounts in a half dozen countries, with corporations like Allis-Chalmers, Miller Beer, Briggs & Stratton, Evinrude, Lawn-Boy, 3M, Outboard Marine Aviation, Sears Roebuck, and Club Xanadu in Costa Rica. At the time of the Kaiser styling contest he was involved with Alfa Romeo on the 6C 2500. Darrin had only the Kaiser project on his plate. Had it been a one-on-one contest, things might have been different.

Kaiser and beyond

And many of his contributions were used on Kaiser products. After the Kaisers bought Willys in 1953, Stevens designed the Jeep Wagoneer, a shape that lasted 30 years. He always referred to this and his other styling projects in the plural: “we” did this or that. He simply wanted to make it clear that Brooks Stevens Associates was not a one-man company.

Kip also did his own thing on a Kaiser chassis. While Darrin was placing a pretty fiberglass body over a stock Henry J chassis to create the Kaiser-Darrin, Stevens moved in the opposite direction with the Excalibur J. This was a highly modified, dual purpose, road-and-track sports car. It could pace the vaunted Jaguar XK120, and often did in competition.

In the late Fifties, Stevens created the Excalibur-Valkyrie-Scimitar design exercise, which showed what could be done with aluminum. In the 1960s he reskinned the Aero-Willys for Willys-Overland do Brasil. This facelift persuaded Studebaker President Sherwood Egbert to let him modernize the aging “Loewy coupes.” The result was the sinfully beautiful Gran Tursimo Hawk of 1962-64.

Next Kip applied crisp, modern styling to the dowdy Studebaker Lark, giving it an extra lease on life. He produced the first sliding-roof station wagon in the Wagonaire, and his Studebaker prototypes for a new generation of cars were things of breathtaking beauty. (See “Why Studebaker Failed.”)

Faithful but unfortunate

Unhappily, most of his automotive efforts were for dead or dying companies. Had Kip worked for say, Chrysler, they would be more famous. Still, he managed to cap his career with an unequivocal success. This was the Excalibur line of “modern classics” based on a successive series of Mercedes-Benz commencing with the immortal SSK. Among “replicars” the Excalibur was the best selling, best engineered, and most carefully built.

Automobiles were but one facet of a half-century career, but they were his first love. He established the Brooks Stevens Automotive Museum, small and select, including some of the finest: the Packard Twin Six, Duesenberg Indy racer, Brescia Bugatti,  Mercedes-Benz 500K and 540K, Cord L29 and 812, Marmon V-12. Its frontispiece was a staggeringly beautiful 1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B, the world’s fastest prewar sports car. He added many of his own personal designs, like the Jeepster and Brazilian Willys, and the Alfa 6C 2500.

Clifford Brooks Stevens (1911-1995)

Kip did not come in for the universal plaudits he deserved. Too often, casual observers saw only him as hopeless exponent of chrome and tailfins. This is very shortsighted, for it fails to take the full measure of the man.

He was one of the supporting pillars of the automotive community: manufacturers and collectors. His whimsical, brilliant, imaginative, formal and radical designs were truly unique. His non-automotive work served America’s great corporations. Many of his designs, still around today, gained international renown.

He was as well a great companion, not at all self-centered (rare among designers). Always he drew out the best in his friends—car nuts, fellow stylists, lowly automotive writers. No one escaped his attraction. Everyone became proud and delighted to have their work encouraged by a man of such distinction.

There are many ways to measure wealth, but Kip Stevens banked his greatest treasure in the hearts of his friends. We cherish his memory.

Further reading

“The Greatness of Alex Tremulis,” Part 2: Tucker to Kaiser-Frazer,” 2020

“Kaiser-Frazer and the Making of Automotive History,” first of two parts, 2019

“All the Luck: Howard A. ‘Dutch’ Darrin,” first of three parts, 2017

“Joe Frazer, Father of the Jeep,” first of three parts, 2011