Only rarely will Automotive News publish a historical piece. One such occasion was when it ran a feature about former Chrysler design head Virgil Exner. The thing I find most striking about this article is its utter lack of journalistic backbone.
Reporter David Phillips called the late-1950s “among the best for Detroit design.” Really? This was the peak period for stylistic excesses such as chrome-slathered tail fins. Cars grew so big that some no longer fit into a typical garage, yet you often had to contort yourself to get into them because of “lower, longer, wider” styling. Many cars had “dog-leg” windshields that you could bang your knee against.
The public backlash against Detroit’s wares was so intense that import sales soared — and the Big Three was forced to come out with more compact and practical cars.
One could go as far as to argue that the decline and fall of U.S. automakers began right here. Alas, you’d never know that from the Automotive News story.
“But it was after he joined Chrysler in 1949 that Exner made his most lasting impression, with Chrysler’s ‘Forward Look.’ Exner couldn’t change Chrysler’s upright, dowdy cars fast enough. Featuring bodacious, streamlined bodies and tail fins, the ‘Forward Look’ cars appeared to be moving even when parked and were responsible for reviving Chrysler’s sales.
The cars marked Chrysler’s return to advanced styling after 20 years of conservatism that followed the Airflow flop of the mid-1930s.
The sleek ‘Forward Look’ also had a marked effect on GM and Ford styling in the late 1950s — a period now considered among the best for Detroit design. The 1959 Chevrolet, for example, countered Chrysler with huge, flared tail fins that soared across the back.”
— David Phillips, Automotive News (2018)
RE:SOURCES
- Phillips, David; 2018. “Virgil Exner, noted Chrysler designer who shook up 1950s styling, is born.” Automotive News. Posted Sept. 25; accessed Feb. 18, 2021.
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I agree that the late 1950s had been one of the best eras of US automobile styling. Flawed as it was, mainly for its gigantism and contemporary reduction in build quality, those cars had character in spades and most of them were beautiful to my eyes, for example the 1957 Plymouth and Dodge, or the 1959 GM cars (funny enough in case of GM cars I prefer pillared sedans to the two door hardtop which had a turret-top quality)
Fast forward to twenty years, and American cars became anonymous three-boxes with no personality, no character and even shoddier build quality.