A Few More from the Exner/Engel Period

Mythical 1962 Fury Commando Sport two-door hardtop. This was a base two-door post coupe, and I chopped it into this svelte pillarless coupe. Though there was a hardtop in the lineup, it looked nothing like this. I based the greenhouse shape of my Commando Sport on photos I've seen of clay models in Exner's studios of the time (thank you Collectible Automobile!) Apparently they were 'watered-down' quite a bit on the way to production, so I've just 'restored' the dramatic clay appearance... Instead of being considered one of his 'oddities' I think it could very easily have been one of his best. Just look at the way his fender bulges work perfectly when the rest of the car is purely styled. I think this could have been a cut-rate Thunderbird type car for Plymouth. I think a true test is that it looks impossibly elegant even with blackwall tires and steelie wheels/hubcaps! "Commando Sport" refers to the name of the top engine in this Fury.

A slightly resto-modded '62 Dodge Dart sedan. This is something like what Chip Foose could do with a simple Exner-bodied Dodge, one of his last 'pure' designs. I think 18 inch whitewalls with 'steelies' and dogdish hubcaps might be a new look! Ex's bodyside sculpting always competed with the extra chrome doodads that Marketing insisted on. Once you remove that stuff, Ex's pure forms are revealed, and they make total sense. I love the slight rise at the cowl. It took Engel a few years to get the money to flatten out this cowl design, a look he hated. The slight rise of the cowl on these Exner cars was meant to evoke the lines of classic speedboats and I think is a very classy touch.

Twelve years before the disco-era Cordoba was introduced, 1963, Chrysler could have made a long-hood, short-deck coupe to combat the Grand Prix, Thunderbird and Riviera in the burgeoning personal luxury coupe market. This was a New Yorker coupe to begin with, and I changed the proportions and simplifed the chrome trim a bit, in a nod to the simpler bodyside fad begun with the '62 Grand Prix. I think this series of large Chryslers is very underrated. They had a two-year-only body, with traces of the fuselage styling that would come in '69. They also had traces of the stillborn S series of large cars, the last styled by Exner as Engel was taking over. By adding the more classic-era proportions of a longer hood, shorter deck and slightly reworked formal C pillar, I think Ex's lines work even better.