The Exn­er sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as “Father of the Tail­fin” in The Auto­mo­bile (UK) for August 2024. This sec­ond of a two-part arti­cle records how Ex tri­umphed at Chrysler, where he cre­at­ed the tail­fin, sym­bol­ic of Amer­i­ca in the Fifties. Con­clud­ed from Part 1….

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.