(first posted 7/31/2013) Virgil Exner was a man of many dreams indeed, some better than others. His last one at Chrysler reminds me of some of the dreams I have at night, and I mean that literally. The most amazing “vehicles” appear to me in the depths of the night; if only I could have found a way to record them, I might have become a famous designer too. Exner’s Turboflyte of 1961 perhaps comes closest to one of my “dream cars”. Vivid dreamers!
The rear wing is a predictor of things to come from Chrysler with the Superbird and Charger Daytona, although I doubt it had any genuine aerodynamic function here. Since the cars in my dreams most often also can fly, this one really hits the mark. At least with it, there’s something of an explanation. In my dreams, when the car I’m driving suddenly goes airborne, I always think “Aha!, why didn’t I figure out earlier that cars are capable of flight?”
The white stripe in the tire tread is an odd touch. I guess if you’re going to show that much rubber, might as well make it more distinctive.
The roof lifts up for egress, but thinking about using this in a downpour is a bad dream. The front end does predict the 1963 Chrysler to some degree.
The Imperial D’Elegance is also unfortunate. Yet it was clearly a very influential design, given the many shapes and details that show up production Chrysler products. The 1960 Chryslers showed numerous influences.
And I see way too much 1960 Valiant in the shape of the rear. No toilet seat, though. It’s the batting average that counts, and Exner certainly left us with plenty of dreams I’d be glad to have had.
That Turboflyte looks like it jumped out of a Chuck Jones cartoon.
I’m seeing a lot of 59/60 Caddy in that Imperial, really a lot of GM all around..
The Turboflyte is very cartoonish, but could almost pass for a ”57-’58 Cadillac prototype. Remarkable that so many eyesores came from the same hand that penned the Ghia Diablo! Like PN says, it’s the batting average that counts.
Some of the early Looney Toons / Merrie Melodies shorts had some great art showing early ’40s and late ’30s cars. There’s one in particular that has some great shots – Bugs and Thugs, if I recall correctly, has Bugs riding in (and then fixing) an awesome car. That one is worth watching anyway; the tiny mobster ordering Bugs to “Shaddap, rabbit. is classic.
The Turboflyte looks like a badly kitbashed model car to me. It supposedly was powered by one of Chrysler’s prototype turbine engines.
The Imperial D’Elegance front looks a bit like the 1956 Imperial Norseman concept, but the Norseman looks much better overall IMO. Too bad it went to the bottom of the ocean en route from Turin to New York.
Don’t recall seeing that Norseman before, what a gorgeous car!
There are not many pictures of the Norseman available, except what were taken by Ghia before the car was shipped. It was in the cargo hold of the Italian cruise liner Andrea Doria, headed for New York, when the ship collided with another and sank.
The Norseman had a fully cantilevered roof, with no A or B pillars. The rear window also retracted into the fastback-style roof.
Exner was a great proponent of full cutouts over the wheels, supposedly saying that the wheel was one of mankind’s most noble inventions–why hide it? From that viewpoint these two cars are at the extremes–the way overexposed front wheel of the Turboflyte versus the fully shrouded rear wheel of the D’Elegance. Some of the thinking of the Turboflyte’s front corner found its way into Exner’s last Imperials with their floating headlights.
I’ve never seen the D’Elegance before that I can recall. From the rear-quarter shot, one would think that it might be banned from suburban streets with low load ratings.:)
Wow interesting stuff. I think of few of these touches ended up in the Homermobile.
http://www.michaelmusgrove.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/HomerMobile.png
Wasn’t a jpeg so the site gave me issues.
“The Homer”, from Powell Motors.
“Powell makes a pow-pow-powerful car!”
First thing I thought of!
Came here to post this.
+100
Batmobile anyone?!
Looks like something that could be described in a Ray Bradbury novel.
Ouch! Almost hurts the eyes. However, it would seem some details even made it to the Engel era: the taillight bar looks very 1966 Charger to me.
I was thinking the same thing, Charger tailight.
The D’elegance looks somewhat similar to some mock ups for the 62 models before they were shrunk. The original concepts for the 62’s were beautiful in most respects with the curved glass windows and the odd styling worked better on the larger cars. The
D’elegance is like wise beautiful in my book the Turboflyte is just a little to far out there. Looks like something off the Jetson’s Cartoon.
It is amazing to contrast the Turboflite with cars like the 61 Continental that was in Lincoln showrooms everywhere. I suppose that this car highlights that Bill Mitchell at GM and Elwood Engle at Ford were redefining style for a new generation, while Exner remained firmly planted in the wild Harley Earl school of the early 50s. The car looks like a caricature of a 1950s show car, which is odd since it was done in the early 60s. Absolutely nothing predictive of the future there.
We have discussed the D’Elegance before. Very unusual.
I read in “Chrysler Chronicle” that Virgil Exner reportedly did not care for the way the Imperial turned out.
I think Exner was trying to marry three strains of design while recovering from major heart attacks. So you get Jetsons/Jukebox Fintastic, Italoeuropean, and proto-retro/neo-classic all in the same car. And although the shear Continental-Riviera look of Mitchell/Engel was the spirit of the sixties, ultimately the short deck long hood neo-classic ruled the 70’s. So I guess he was too early to the party.
A bit of perspective may be useful here. This was the sci-fi era of car design. Weird stuff like this was the norm rather than the exception. In addition, concept or show cars are supposed to color outside the lines.
The Turboflyte was an evolutionary dead end but the Imperial strikes me as an important design, e.g., it anticipates the fuselage look of the late-60s. Chrysler deserves some credit for pioneering curved side glass.
That said, Exner’s legacy would have been less tainted if he had retired earlier. Or shifted over to aircraft design.
The curvature of the side glass on the Imperial looks quite radical for that time. The car itself has many interesting (and predictive) design details, but the overall look is not that attractive.
The Dodge Flyte Wing was one of Exner’s better concepts. Its a shame that the higher ups “heard” that GM was downsizing. I think the “S-series” cars looked great (minus the “chicken wing”) and the Flyte wing would have predicted them very well.
I always thought that the original S-series Plymouth, Dodge and Imperial were very sharp cars, and would have been much better than what those divisions did offer for 1962. But the original S-series Chrysler and DeSoto were awkard and would have looked dated very quickly – particularly the front end. (This is going by the photographs of the full-size clay models in the styling studios, which have been published in Collectible Automobile and other magazines.)
That’s really wild. It’s like a prehistoric Nissan Juke.
He puts this out in 1961.
Wow.
Talk about completely missing the styling trends of an era.
Chrysler couldn’t get rid of Exner fast enough.
When the 1957 models failed to take into consideration that these cars had to actually be assembled without dozens of design flaws and ruined Chrysler’s quality image, that should have been a sign for Chrysler to find someone who actually knew how to design a real car.
There’s an important difference between design and engineering, and one isn’t particularly dependant on the other. I find the early forward look cars quite attractively designed, but they weren’t well engineered. Likewise most cars of today are far superior in their engineering, but I don’t find the design attractive.
All that aside, can we contact those people who make the fakey 1957 Chevy kits for Camaros, and have them tool up an Imperial D’elegance add-on kit for the current Toyota Camry? Then we could have design and engineering at the same time!!
The 1957 models were riddled with flaws because Chrysler rushed them into production without taking the necessary time to “fine tune” them. Exner was only responsible to the extent that these bodies were all-new, and thus needed the standard amount of pre-production work to catch flaws. There were no inherent flaws in Exner’s designs that couldn’t have been corrected with more development time.
These cars were originally supposed to debut for 1958, but Chrysler management decided to introduce them for 1957, as the corporation’s sales were weak for 1956. With that tight schedule, there simply wasn’t enough time to work out the bugs.
Agreed. The cars were extensively new from suspensions to frames, to engines and transmissions and, of course, bodies. 2 years was not enough time, especially after they had just done an all-new car for 1955. That last year of the then-customary 3 year design cycle would have made a lot of difference.
Affecting the build quality in addition to the truncated development timetable was the 1957 bodies were the first that Chrysler engineered without the traditional ethic Briggs had brought to body engineering and construction. Although they contracted bodies from Briggs for decades and had input into how those were engineered, ultimately Briggs applied their own methods. The 1955-56 bodies still showed the Briggs careful, over-engineering since they would have been in development before the Chrysler buyout. Combine the “we-know-better” mentality of Chrysler engineering and the rushed 1957 timetable, the results weren’t surprising.
Like Doug, I disagree with the second part of your comment on the basis that design is not equal to engineering; you can’t use Exner as the fall-guy for the engineering shortcomings of the early Forward Look Mopars. Granted, designing with both manufacture and the end customer in mind is important. Less so for a concept car though.
To be fair, this article should have presented the Imperial D’Elegance first, as it was shown in 1958 when fins were all the rage. What is somewhat surprising is that the Turboflyte was shown in 1961. By that time, the writing was on the wall that big fins were on their way out. Yet they present a concept with a bubble top and very tall fins reminiscent of the 1959 Cadillac Cyclone concept, topped with a horizontal bar to turn it into a huge spoiler.
Meanwhile, GM designers cut down and reshaped the Cyclone’s fins to be more subtle, and later press shots always showed the car in convertible guise, with the bubble top stowed in the trunk! (aside: With the smaller fins and no top, the Cyclone looks a lot like a ’61-63 Thunderbird.)
Jetson cars. From a bygone age when we thought the possibilities were endless and the future bright. How wrong we all were!
” From a bygone age when we thought the possibilities were endless and the future bright. How wrong we all were!”
Wayne thanks for that, one of my favourites from back in the day!
Lots of design cues used on other models on display the demolition derby front never made it into anything Ive seen though, its perfect for that purpose, no sheet metal to fold back onto the front tyre to imobilise the weapon
The first reaction to the D’Elegance is something like “Gaaaa!” But the more I study it, I discover the cohesiveness of the styling. This is in no way a beautiful car. But each element fits well with the others. The design just “works.” It’s consistent. Particularly, if you compare this to the ’61 or ’62 Imperials, this is harmonious (even if we don’t like the tune).
For some reason the back of the Imperial immediately made me think Buick??
The TurboFlyte looks like they decided to try 7 or 8 possible styling “features” on 1 car so as to save the cost of building 3-4 separate cars.
The Imperial? Looks like 60 Plymouth crossed with early 50s fastback Buick.
If the Imperial looks fairly decent WITHOUT the “toilet seat”, you have to wonder why they added it to production cars. And for that matter, why add it to the Valiant if the Valiant was originally supposed to be a standalone brand?
I think it’s kind of cool actually.
Speaking of Valiants, if it hasn’t been done already, can someone do a write-up on the various Italian Valiants? When I Google Imaged the Chrysler Horseman, pictures of a Ghia Valiant styling proposal and the Valiant St. Regis were linked to it. Neither Valiant was as radical as these cars, but the St Regis looks like it was inspired by the Turboflyte.
The Turboflyte top and windshield side profiles clearly mimic a fighter canopy and windshield.
You cannot explain the excitement of pulling this issue of Motor Trend out of a rural route mailbox at age 11 (I remember waiting for the mailman to drive up in his Chevy Biscayne on the days when I thought my issue might arrive).
Wow, they had both of them on the cover.
The Turboflyte looks to have a turbine engine. So radical.
It looks more like something from Ed “Big Daddy” Roth.