![]() ![]() The other side of the styling bridge between Exner and Engel is the 1965 Chrysler. Unfortunately for Exner, the early 1960s were not as kind as they were to Engel, so people sometimes forget his beautiful Ghia concepts and forward-thinking “Forward Look” cars and focus on the Valiant and 1962 models.Įngel, on the other hand, although he produced some mediocre designs throughout his career and leaned too heavily on his favored Continental and Thunderbird motifs, produced relatively few stinkers, leaving his reputation comparatively untarnished. A genius is often judged by his greatest masterpiece or his most spectacular failure. In the meantime at Ford, of course, Elwood Engel was simply designing one of the most timelessly beautiful luxury cars, the Lincoln Continental, whose basic shape was so perfect, it lasted the whole of the 1960s. ![]() The Plymouth emerged from the debacle as arguably the less heinous of the two, but time has shown that both the Dodge and Plymouth possess a “so ugly that I like it” vibe, a mantle carried for years by the otherwise dissonant Volkswagen Type 1. The plus side was that Chrysler got a lot of mileage out of the B-Body platform after a few aggressive tweaks however, Exner’s reputation has really never recovered from his perceived faux-pas regarding the, um, polarizing styling of the ’62s. A misunderstood conversation between Ed Cole and some other automotive fat cat was represented as fact, and a rushed restyle meant good things for drag racers, but bad things for Chrysler’s bottom line. The story of the 1962 models’ genesis is classic car-lovers’ folklore. Regardless of your take on the abilities of these two men and the machines they helped to create, the ’64 Plymouth is convincing evidence that an Exner/Engel collaboration would make a worthwhile piece of historical fiction. In a desirable combination of white and red, this 1964 Fury convertible stands like an elegant stone arch between the outlandishness of Exner’s 1962 and ’63 Chryslers and the attractively pedestrian conformity of Engel’s ’65 and ’66 models. ![]()
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