1954 Plymouth Explorer Concept: Not by Exner

There is little Internet information regarding the 1954 Plymouth Explorer concept car.  Two snippets are here and here.  The second link mentions in passing that a Chrysler Corporation press release credited coachbuilder Ghia (which built the car) as being the designer, though the writer believed the designer was Virgil Exner (1909-1973) who was Chrysler's styling director and responsible for some previous Ghia-built show cars.

For a long time I too assumed that Exner and his team were responsible for most of those early-to-mid-1950s show cars, including the Explorer.  I got my information mostly from Motor Trend magazine in those days, but no longer have copies that might have dealt with the Explorer.

We now know that Ghia indeed designed as well as built a number of those cars, including the Explorer.  His Wikipedia entry credits Ghia owner Luigi Segre (1919-1963) with the design.  However, it seems to have been inspired by a previous Ghia product, the Fiat 8V Supersonic whose design is credited to Giovanni Savonuzzi.

The Plymouth Explorer still exists, and you can view it in Los Angeles at the Petersen Automotive Museum.  I saw it in the Spring of 2017 and took some photos displayed below.

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First, some early Plymouth Explorer photos:

The windshield might be a preview of Chrysler's 1955 version of the faddish mid-late '50s wraparounds.  Chrysler retained a backwards-sloping A-pillar, unlike most it its competitors.  The grille housing seems awkward seen from this angle.

Chrysler Corporation's brand having vertical grille bars was DeSoto, so the Explorer would better have been  given that label (though it was built on a Plymouth chassis and had a 6-cylinder motor instead of a DeSoto Firedome V-8).  The forward-leaning grille seems awkward from this perspective as well.

The substantial bumpers, especially at the rear, make the Explorer more street-worthy than most other show cars.
Now for my photos of the Explorer and the Fiat 8V Supersonic that also was on display.  Click on them to enlarge.

Front bumpers could not have protected the grille.

The tops of the rear fenders are oddly fussy.  These details and the grille mar an otherwise nice design on a comparatively large American platform.

The Fiat 8V Supersonic.  Similarities include the long hood, short passenger compartment and the raised, horizontal side trim and its air vent.

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Viewing Concept Cars at Your Convenience

Getting to view a concept car in person usually means the hassle of attending an automobile show.  But if you happen to be in Paris on l'Avenue des Champs-Élysées, you have a good chance of seeing one.  A few years ago, I wrote here about a Peugeot I saw there.

I was back in Paris mid-April, strolling down the Champs, and got to see two concept cars, one by Peugeot and another from Renault.  Both major French firms have showrooms there (on opposite sides of the street) displaying productions cars, logo gear items, car models, etc. besides any concept cars that might be handy.  The concept cars are not necessarily the very latest -- those do the car show circuit first and then are handed to automotive journalists for publicity purposes.  Once that phase is done, off they might go to the Champs for a while.

The cars I viewed were the Peugeot Instinct (some background here), and the Renault Symbioz (background here).

I won't comment on these car at present, because the point of this post has to do with their public availability, not their features.  The latter are wrapped up in what They expect to cram down our throats in coming years as opposed to what we might actually prefer.  The Symbioz is the more extreme of the two in that regard.

Below are some photos I took that might give you an idea as to what might be found when you're in Paris next time.

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Peugeot Instinct

Renault Symbioz

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K-310: Virgil Exner's First Chrysler Concept

A famous (for us car buffs) stylist was Virgil Exner (1909-1973), who headed Chrysler design in the 1950s.  He also was controversial.  Raymond Loewy regarded him as a kind of traitor with respect to his role in the design process for the radical 1947 Studebaker line.  There was styling controversy in the late 1950s when the shapes of Chrysler Corporation cars' tail fins became unjustifiably baroque and other details seemed odd.

Nevertheless, Exner was a talented artist who illustrated Studebaker advertisements in the early 1930s and created some outstanding automobile designs in the years 1945-1955 or thereabouts.

One such design was that of Chrysler's first major postwar concept car, the K-310.  Exner had been brought into Chrysler Corporation, but wasn't yet in charge of styling.  He worked on some projects more or less on his own at first, one of which was the K-310.

At the time it was designed -- about 1950 -- Exner was infatuated by coachbuilt Italian automobiles being created during what I consider the Golden Age of Italian styling.  His K-310 was a large car, sitting on a Chrysler chassis and powered by the corporation's new "hemi" V-8 motor.  With management approval, construction of the K-310 was farmed out to Italy's Ghia firm, which did an excellent job.

The K-310 was revealed to the public 2 November 1951, about ten months after General Motors' futuristic LeSabre was introduced in a Life magazine article.  These initial postwar dream cars were conceptual opposites.  The LeSabre was intended to predict future automobile features, whereas the K-310 presented an alternative to current American car designs.  The LeSabre proved to be more famous and influential.

That said, the K-310 was the better design.  That's because it was a practical car with better-coordinated detailing than the LeSabre's low, two-passenger collection of somewhat unrelated details.

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A widely-used publicity photo of the K-310.

Frontal styling was a reprise of 1930s design elements.  The grille differed from the wide 1950 American style featuring bold, sculpted chromed bars.  Headlights were placed far from the body sides, normal positioning until the very late '30s.  Covered by the bumper was something that might resemble a starter crank cover.

Although the K-310 was large, its styling wasn't ponderous.  The tapered hood-grille ensemble and catwalks with hooded headlight assemblies helped lighten the design.

Some affectations included the spare tire cover design on the trunk lid and the "gunsight" tail lights.  I like the tail lights, but consider the trunk decoration unnecessary.

The passenger compartment "greenhouse" was nicely done, following the hardtop convertible practice initiated by GM for 1949.  However, the K-310 lacked the hardtop's B-pillars and roll-down windows abaft of the door windows.

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Le Sabre: First Public View, 1950

General Motors' first post- World War 2 dream car (as they were called then) was the LeSabre (brief Wikipedia entry here).

It was astonishingly futuristic.  And that astonishment took place for the first time for many people when Life, a leading American general-interest magazine, published photos of the car.  This happened in late December of 1950 when the 1 January 1951 issue appeared in mail boxes and on news stands.  The LeSabre public announcement, for that's what it amounted to, appeared in an article about General Motors, king of corporate America at that time.

Below is my scan of that landmark image along with some publicity photos of what appears to be a LeSabre mockup.

Some puzzling items: Only one functional LeSabre was built, yet the Life image shows two cars, neither painted its normal silvery blue.  My guess is that the upper car is a detailed mockup.  Note the lack of chrome on the rear bumper: the real LaSabre had chromed bumpers and trim.  The nearer car has a chromed front bumper and grille, so it must be the real thing, but painted like the mockup and not yet in silvery blue.

Knowledgeable readers are urged to correct me in comments if my speculations are wrong.

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Image as it appeared in Life magazine's 1 January 1951 issue that was on news stands in late December of 1950.

GM styling boss Harley Earl posing with what looks like a LeSabre mockup -- note the dull finish on what are chromed areas on the actual car..

Publicity photo of the same likely LeSabre mockup.

Publicity photo of the apparent LeSabre mockup with model at the wheel.

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1956 Pontiac Club de Mer Concept

Golden Ages seem pretty common.  That is, there are plenty of them  -- golden age of illustration, of comic books, of etc.  So I might as well add one more to the pile: Golden Age of General Motors Dream Cars.

I place that about 1954-56 when a good many interesting designs appeared in GM's Motorama traveling shows.  Today's subject is the Pontiac Club de Mer that appeared in the 1956 Motorama (Wikipedia entry here).  The car itself has little if anything nautical about it, but GM publicists took care to show it in seashore environments for non-studio photos (note the photo above and two of the photos below).

The Club de Mer's styling is actually a kind of blending of aircraft and racing car themes in the form of impractical details.  Examples include a small tail fin mounted atop where a trunk lid would be (there was none), and dual streamlined windshields that would probably stream wind directly into the driver's and passenger's faces (note the height of the windshields compared to the position of the model in the photo above).

But, Hey!, the Club de Mer was just a show car.  And a rather fun one at that.

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Studio publicity photo of Harley Earl (left) and a Club de Mer clay model.  In the background is an airbrushed profile view.

Publicity photo showing the Club de Mer by la mer, probably in Florida.  This, and most of the photos below indicate how low the car was: Wikipedia has it as 38.401 inches (975 mm).  But it was drivable, so perhaps the car's main value to GM apart from publicity was in the engineering steps taken to make it work.  Note the low air intake -- something this extreme not seen on mid-50s American production cars.  Also, the familiar Pontiac "streaks" have been reshaped and merge with air intakes near the cowling, a nice touch.

Another pose near water.  Some relief is found in the (possibly non-functional) air outlets on the door and the character line that wraps to the rear.  The little four-pointed stars on the side are another Pontiac brand cue.

Even though the Club de Mer has a relatively simple, rounded-off shape, GM's stylists were able to impart enough of a sense of tension to eliminate a flabby look.  Being a show car, no front bumper was needed.

Another view indicating how low the car was.  The symbol above the Pontiac name was a brand identifier that didn't appear on production cars until the 1957 model year.

As the Wikipedia entry states, the Club de Mer was destroyed, though a scale model survived.  Eventually an enthusiast had this replica created.  I include this Barrett-Jackson photo to show what the rear end looked like.  Clean, aside from that silly fin.  And there is a rear bumper of sorts.

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Mercury's Unpublicized 1955 D-528 Concept Car

There might be other cases like Mercury's 1955 concept D-528, but I suspect there are few of them.    After all, what's the point of designing and building a running concept car using more resources and cost than a non-running "pushmobile" -- and then never formally showing it to the public?  Apparently Ford Motor Company management thought that creating the D-528 was an engineering research "investment" that was worthwhile without the need for any additional benefit of the publicity it might generate if revealed to the public and sent on the auto show circuit.

Unlike many concept cars from the 1950s, the D-528 was never destroyed.  I saw it in the spring at the Petersen Auto Museum in Los Angeles.  The museum's web site's page devoted to the D-528 is here.  It describes the D-528 as follows:

"The D-528 was built to test advanced concepts in seating, lighting, air conditioning, and front frame design. The hinged rear fender bulges were functional, concealing a spare tire on one side and a gas tank on the other. Such a design gave the car adequate luggage capacity despite the need to accommodate a large air conditioning system. Although it boasted design features such as a pillarless windshield and Ford’s first reverse-sloping retractable rear window, it was an in-house research vehicle that was never shown publicly. “Beldone” [as it is sometimes called] was a stage name selected by Paramount Pictures for the car’s appearance in the 1964 Jerry Lewis movie, The Patsy, not an official Ford designation."

Below are some photos I took of it.

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The D-528's styling was probably largely completed in 1954.  Elaborate two-tone paint schemes were already in production on General Motors' redesigned Oldsmobiles and Buicks, but still rare industry-wide.  Chrysler Corporation was two years away from launching its tail fin styling, and quad headlights were even farther in the future.  Perhaps these considerations help explain why the D-528's styling is comparatively clean.  Note that the windshield is somewhat panoramic, but the objects amounting to A-pillars lean backward in the fashion Chrysler used on its 1955 and later models, and not the vertical orientation Fords and Mercurys were given for that model year.  My main complaint about this aspect of the car is that the front fenders are too rounded, providing a heavier-than-necessary appearance.  Oh, and there seems to be too much overhang in front of the wheel opening for a rear-wheel drive car.

The front overhang seems less objectionable in this side view.  Note the thin, flat roof -- a feature Chrysler used in its sensational 1957 redesigns.  The fenders also seem too heavy from this perspective: the sides needed to be flattened a little bit.  And then there are those rounded lumps at the rear....

The quotation above explains the purpose of the lumps, but there is no getting around their awkward appearance.  The trunk lid has a blob-like shape.  It might have been improved by being flatter and by having a more squared-off aft -- something that would have added more carrying capacity.  The taillight housings do not seem to blend well with the bulges.

The most interesting feature of the dashboard design is the central section that intrudes into the passenger compartment.  Unusual for its time, but somewhat prophetic of what can be found on todays' cars.

It's possible that the reason why the D-528 was never formally introduced to the public was that it wasn't all that attractive due to the odd features noted above.

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1954 Mercury Monterey XM-800 Concept

A mid-1950s concept car that was neither a fancied-up production model nor a jazzy dream car was the 1954 Mercury Monterey XM-800.  It could have been a production car for the 1957 model year, and would have been a very attractive one even with the minor adjustments needed to make it practical and street-legal.  Alas, that didn't happen, and by 1958 cars in Ford's stable joined in the styling madness that infected the American automobile industry in those times.

For some background on the Monterey XM-800 and its fate, go here and, especially, here.

Even though it did not become a production design, the XM-800 lent a few styling features to future Ford Motor Company models.  These are shown below.

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High angle photo of the XM-800.  Basically, the design is a clean, archetypical example of mid-1950s American styling.  Significant details include the panoramic windshield, the thin roofline, low hood, and the very long fender line where the endpoints are the extremes of the body (not counting bumpers).

Front three-quarter from slightly below eye-level.  The air scoop on the hood might actually be functional (I can't be sure), but regardless, it adds interest.

A 1957 Mercury Montclair.  Its grille design has a bit of the XM-800's flavor.

The 1961 Mercury grille is even closer.  But these are the only models years halfway close to 1954 where the theme was used.

The rear end suffers from the heavy chrome trim on the trunk -- the only styling failing.  I like the design of the passenger compartment greenhouse, especially the C-pillar with a Targa feeling.

Side view.  A functional, not aesthetic, defect is the small front wheel opening.  The metal sculpting surrounding it echoes the front of the fender.  The rear wheel spat cutline reflects the angle of the rear fender edge as well as that of the greenhouse Targa.  And yes, the lower edge of the car does run downhill from aft forwards.

The general sense of the XM-800's side did get picked up on 1956 Lincolns.  Note the angles of the fore and aft fender edges.  Also the wheel openings.

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1996 Lincoln Sentinel: Non-Running Semi-Retro Concept

Even though it's a "pushmobile" concept car (lacking motor, drivetrain, etc.), Lincoln's 1996 Sentinel is interesting.  Unfortunately, when this post was drafted (early July 2017) there was little information about it on the Internet: examples are here and here.

Some observers regard the Sentinel as having Retro styling -- evoking the classic 1961 Continental.  To a slight degree that is so.  It also echoes a 1988 production model and explores a future grille theme.

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The 1996 Sentinel.

Here is a 2009 Lincoln MKS showing one of several variations of a circa-2010 Lincoln grille theme previewed on the Sentinel.

The Sentinel shown in the car dealership where it spent several years.  It is painted a light gray, but the lighting gives it a warmer color.

The main similarity to the 1961 Continental is the sharp fender line.

Here is a '61 Continental for comparison.

Side view.  As is often the case, concept cars are given wheels that are a little too large.

The Sentinel's passenger compartment greenhouse resembles that of the 1988 Lincoln Continental shown here, and not that of the 1961 Continental.

Side view of a 1961 Continental.  Its main resemblance to the Sentinel from this angle is their simple, uncluttered sides.

High rear view of the Sentinel.

The 1961 Continental's rear design was not adapted for the Sentinel.

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