Virgil Exner: Visioneer: The official biography of Virgil M. Exner, designer extraordinaire
Review from Car Collector magazine, May 2008I had the honor of knowing several of the greatest 20th century designers, Frank Hershey, Gordon Buebrig, Ralph Roberts, Tom Hibbard, and Alec Tremulis. All of them left an indelible mark on the history of automotive design, and Virgil Exner, who I never had the good fortune of meeting, belongs on any list of legendary 20th century American stylists. His influence on 1950s automotive styling is second only to Harley Farl's.  Author Peter Grist takes Exner's legendary career to task in this superb official biography. The book begins with a foreword by Virgil M Exner Jr, who describes his father as a "... romantic at heart. He loved the Wild West, collected guns, a few swords, [and] he liked to read about Civil War battles." Not exactly the depiction of a man who almost single-handedly turned the American automotive industry on its ear in the 1950s.As the author unravels the chain of events that led Exner from Studebaker to Chrysler, one can see that it was almost Ex's destiny to step in and change Chrysler's future, and that of American automotive styling in the 1950s. In 1949 he almost became chief designer at Ford, but fate instead directed him to K T Keller at Chrysler. The rest, as they say, is history. Grist tells that story in chapter four, a remarkable 61 pages in length and so lavishly illustrated that it makes the entire book worth purchasing.  Chapters five, six, and seven, bring the story full circle with Exner's decline at Chrysler in the early 1960s and the changes that came after he was replaced as Vice President of Styling by ex-Ford designer Elwood Engel. In one of the most interesting design segues of the mid-20th century, Grist tells how Exner moved from designing sleek American cars to styling sleek American speedboats in the 1960s, doing for powerboats what he had done for automobiles. Among his designs in the 1960s were the concept Mercer Cobra, the 1965 Bugatti 101C-X, the 1966 Duesenberg concept (which greatly influenced the design of the Mk III Continental), and of course, the trendy Stutz Blackhawk models produced from 1968 to 1988.  Grist concludes the book with a look at another side of Virgil Exner, his beautiful watercolor and acrylic paintings, and a final chapter on the equally interesting career of Virgil Exner Jr, who spent many years working alongside his father, as well as becoming a successful stylist in his own right.  This is a book that goes under the skin and into the mind of a legendary stylist and his creations. It is an intuitive and beautifully illustrated work that belongs on every auto enthusiast's book shelf.