General Motors His first work in design was for
General Motors, where he was hired by GM styling czar
Harley Earl. Before age 30, he was in charge of Pontiac styling.
Loewy and Associates In 1938, he joined
Raymond Loewy's industrial design firm Loewy and Associates, where he worked on
World War II military vehicles and cars, notably Studebaker's 1939–40 models, and advance plans for their revolutionary post-war cars. "But working on Studebaker designs… Exner struggled to get the attention of his boss, who had to sign off on every facet of the designs. Exner was encouraged by Roy Cole, Studebaker's engineering vice president, to work on his own at home on backup designs in case the company's touchy relationship with Loewy blew up". Rivalry and bad feeling between the two resulted in Exner having to leave Studebaker, whose engineering chief Roy Cole provided personal introductions for him to
Ford and
Chrysler. Tailfins soon lost popularity. By the late 1950s, Cadillac and Chrysler–driven by the respective competing visions of GM's Earl and Chrysler's Exner–had escalated the size of fins till some thought they were stylistically questionable and they became a symbol of American excess in the early 1960s. The 1961 models are considered the last of the "
Forward Look" designs; Exner later referred to the finless 1962 downsized Plymouth and Dodge models as "plucked chickens". He believed Chrysler executives had "picked" away at the cars to make them lower in cost. Although fins were out of favor by the early 1960s, fins could still give aerodynamic advantages. In the early 1970s,
Porsche 917 racing automobiles sported fins reminiscent of Exner's designs.
Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Three entities came together in the history of the
Volkswagen Karmann Ghia—a design that ultimately reflected strong influence from Virgil Exner. In the early 1950s, Volkswagen was producing its Type 1 (Beetle). As post-war standards of living increased, executives at Volkswagen were at least receptive to adding a
halo model to its range, if not proactive.
Luigi Segre was committed to expanding the international reputation of
Carrozzeria Ghia. And
Wilhelm Karmann had taken over his family coachbuilding firm
Karmann and was eager to augment his contracts building Volkswagen's convertible models. As the head of Ghia, Segre singularly directed and incubated the project through conception and prototyping, delivering a feasible project that Willhelm Karmann both wanted to and could practically build—the project Willhelm Karmann would in turn present to Volkswagen. The styling itself, however, integrated work by Segre as well as
Mario Boano, Sergio Coggiola, and designer/engineer Giovanni Savonuzzi—and at various times they each took credit for the design. Furthermore, the design bore striking styling similarities to Virgil Exner's Chrysler ''D'Elegance'' and K-310 concepts, which Ghia had been tasked with prototyping, and which in turn reflected numerous cues and themes developed previously by Mario Boano. The precise styling responsibilities were never documented before the passing of the designers, Peter Grist wrote in a 2007 Exner biography that when Exner in 1955 eventually saw the Karmann Ghia, which cribbed heavily from his Chrysler D'Elegance, "he was pleased with the outcome and glad that one of his designs had made it into large-scale production." Chris Voss, a stylist in Exner's office, reported in 1993, that Exner considered the Karmann Ghia the ultimate form of flattery. After Volkswagen approved the design in November 1953, the Karmann Ghia debuted at the 1955 Paris Auto show and went into production, first at Ghia and then in
Osnabrück — ultimately to reach a production over 445,000, running 19 years virtually unchanged. ==Retirement==