Quote:
Originally Posted by jcommin
Everyone has their day in the sun and Exner is no different. He designed some great looking cars, including the VW Karmen Ghia and I love the 57 Chrysler 300, but he couldn't get past the fin fad. He overreached in the early 60s - his fin cars went sideways and got caught up with the rumor that the GM full size cars were going to get downsized. His 60 and 61 designs are just ugly. You can definitely see the design differences from Exner, to Engel.
He is not alone - Harley Earl suffered the same fate. There is a significant difference between the GM 58 and 59 designs. All of the GM full size cars are awful and became very dated, the Chevy being the least awful. There are a few other GM designers that were followers of Earl that couldn't get past the jet age fad.
|
Exner did not design the Karmann Ghia. It is, famously, substantially a reapplication on
A smaller platform of most of the same themes of Exner’s Chrysler d’Elegance, but that interpretation was done in-house by Ghia without any clear attribution, basically collaboratively between Mario Boano, Luigi Segre, Giovanni Savonucci and whoever else.