Hasta La Ideas

We had to show you this car because it’s so freakin’ bizarre. In the late 1950s, Chrysler sought an answer to the popular Corvette, which was eating U.S. auto manufacturers’ high-end sports car breakfast. The task for designing the Corvette-killer fell to Virgil Exner, the industrial designer who had worked for—and had a falling out with—Raymond Loewy, and who would eventually become Chrysler’s first Vice President of Styling. Prior to that, Chrysler engineers (shudder) controlled the design process.

What Exner came up with was unconventional, to say the least.

His XNR (get it?) concept resembled an assymetrical shark and took tailfins in an unexpected direction. The lopsided car seemed designed for the driver to belittle his passenger, with a tiny vestige of a passenger-side window and even a hatch you could close over that side altogether, reminding your shotgun-rider which of you was literally in the driver’s seat.

Needless to say, the conservative Chrysler brass nixed the car. And before long, they nixed poor Exner.

The one-of-a-kind prototype pictured here is currently in the auto world news because it’s about to go up for auction in California.

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