VGMagazine

   A nod was given the American taste of custom detail with the spare tire metal shape of the truck lid, and the free standing microphone taillights. Two versions were made. The convertible being less successful as an advanced design study. With conservative modification the coupe design was to live on in the Mullner bodied Bentley Continental.
   Initially fifty K-310s were contracted by Chrysler to be sold at the princely sum of $20 thousand dollars, but the recession caused by the Korean War saw only a handful produced. The car’s real significance was the sea-change it signaled at Chrysler.
   The next car to come from this American Italian collaboration was the Chrysler Ghia specials of 1953. A fine example of this series is the Thomas Special. The motivating force behind the creation of this exercise was C. B. Thomas, who was then export director of Chrysler. The design was once again based on the 125.5in wheelbase chassis used for all Chryslers, except the Imperial. The design of the Thomas Special advanced Chrysler design into characteristically unique territory. The car produced had the muscular look of a Ferrari Berlinetta, and the lines of a car headed directly for a Concours. Once again it portrayed another Exner design tenet, that you couldn’t take a European design and scale it up to American size, or effectively reduce an American design to European dimensions. The Thomas Special was an effective portrayal of a high performance coupe, with taut graceful lines that defined this international relationship. About 18 cars were built.
   ’53 was a fertile year for the Ghia Exner Chrysler relationship. Simultaneously with the Thomas Special, this international team produced the Chrysler d’Elegance, the Desoto Adventurer I and Dodge Firearrow Roadster. This was a dramatic out-pouring of finished design studies. It went a long way to cementing Exner’s position inside Chrysler as director of design. In ’54 The Ghia-Exner collaboration released the second Firearrow Roadster, the Firearrow Sport Coupe, then incredibly the third Firearrow Roaster. As implied earlier, these were not static display show cars, but runners; and serious runners at that. With the ever increasing power of the Hemi, and matted to the new Power Flight automatic transmission, the Firearrow Sport Coupe was timed at 143.44 miles an hour on the Chrysler proving grounds. This was a clean, distinctive well proportioned design, whose crisp peeked, unchromed fenders made one unified shape from front to back, and produced highlights all the chrome of GM could only dream of.

   Being able to produce this series of prototype cars in the Italian method, allowed Exner and his team of to quickly explore contemporary shape and volume. From the pages of the magazines, and the American and European autoshow displays, it was becoming obvious an automotive future was being defined at Chrysler. What that future held for the public at large, had yet to be defined. But soon would be.

III.

   Impressed by Exner’s prodigious creative talents, Keller promoted Exner to Director of Styling on the heels of Ford’s pushing Chrysler back to number three in American sales volume. His mandate was simple, to completely revamp the Chrysler line-up lineup for 1955. From the numerous concept cars of ’53, and Chrysler’s publicity in support of them, it was expected that the Ghia cars pre-saged Chrysler’s new line-up; but a funny thing happened on the way to the body presses in Detroit.
   All of the Chrysler Ghias that were making the publicity rounds at the International auto shows in ’53 had been on the drawing board since ’51 & early ’52. It was an event at the Turin auto show of ’52, and again in ’53 that changed everything.
   At the Pininfarina stand at the ’52 Turin show was a prototype Lancia based on the B52 chassis. Dubbed the PF 200, it had a nearly circular center grill, rather reminiscent of the K-310, Thomas Special and DeElegance. But the Lancia stepped away from the Frazer Nash, Chrysler Ghia headlight treatment inset from the fenders. Here the headlights defined the leading edge of the front fenders, setting a clean a straight line all the way to the tail; a tail that became fins shaped by the sloping sides of the trunk.
   Another star of the show was at the Bertone stand; the Fiat Abarth 1400. Here too the headlights, with strong chrome rings, defined the leading edge of the front fenders, but from there on was a study in fluid sheet metal shapes. In the Abarth a third headlight and a split grill replaced the central grille, so prevalent in the cars of the period.