May 27, 2026 · 34 min · 14 segments
It was late 1956 and craftsmen in Turin were thrashing to complete the latest, mosrt beautiful, and most complex project they had ever done for Chrysler. It was a concept car called The Norseman and…
Brian LohnesHost
The story of the Norseman doesn't start on the fateful day it ended up as fish food.
Instead, it really starts all the way back in the 1930s with a guy named Virgil Exner.
Hardcore automotive history geeks will know the name Exner as he is one of the most decorated in some circles and most controversial in other circles automotive designers and stylists in history.
His career began at General Motors, working under the legendary Harley Earl in their design department.
Gifted both in that discipline and the ability to navigate the corporate leviathan that was GM in the 1930s, a few years later he was the chief stylist for the Pontiac line of cars.
Ever industrious, he left General Motors in 1938 to work for Raymond Lowy & Associates, a business that was on the rise and would one day become one of the most powerful design firms in the world.
His concentration would be to work on the designs for Studebaker cars primarily.
With the intervention of World War II, there wasn't a lot of car designing going on, and by 1944, he left Lowy's company to work for Studebaker directly.
His influence is very prominent in many of the late 40s Studebakers that Lowy gets most of the credit for, but really, Exner penned a lot of those cars.
In 1949, he departed Studebaker to take a job as the head of styling at Chrysler.
Now, his major effort here was to evolve a line of boxy, kind of frumpy Chryslers and make them modern and as dynamic as the cars that were starting to appear from other companies, as the automotive industry really completed its transition from wartime work to full civilian concentration.
Today, we'd call them Concept Cars or Dream Cars or some other name, but the tradition at Chrysler would span the decades, and excluding the years where the country was at war, Idea Cars were definitely part of their program.
These were the kind of magical styling exercises that got the public excited about a brand and gave them some looks into the future and trends and different things, ideas that could be highlighted in the coming years or generational influences for new models.
Exner's philosophy in these cars was simple but carried a dastardly level of difficulty to properly execute.
They had to incorporate new, practical styling concepts that could be executed in some form.
They had to add usable passenger enhancements and comforts, and they had to be fully functional.
In short, these were more than just rolling static display models made in-house.
The story of the Norseman doesn't start on the fateful day it ended up as fish food.
Instead, it really starts all the way back in the 1930s with a guy named Virgil Exner.
Hardcore automotive history geeks will know the name Exner as he is one of the most decorated in some circles and most controversial in other circles automotive designers and stylists in history.
His career began at General Motors, working under the legendary Harley Earl in their design department.
Gifted both in that discipline and the ability to navigate the corporate leviathan that was GM in the 1930s, a few years later he was the chief stylist for the Pontiac line of cars.
Ever industrious, he left General Motors in 1938 to work for Raymond Lowy & Associates, a business that was on the rise and would one day become one of the most powerful design firms in the world.
His concentration would be to work on the designs for Studebaker cars primarily.
With the intervention of World War II, there wasn't a lot of car designing going on, and by 1944, he left Lowy's company to work for Studebaker directly.
His influence is very prominent in many of the late 40s Studebakers that Lowy gets most of the credit for, but really, Exner penned a lot of those cars.
In 1949, he departed Studebaker to take a job as the head of styling at Chrysler.
Now, his major effort here was to evolve a line of boxy, kind of frumpy Chryslers and make them modern and as dynamic as the cars that were starting to appear from other companies, as the automotive industry really completed its transition from wartime work to full civilian concentration.
Today, we'd call them Concept Cars or Dream Cars or some other name, but the tradition at Chrysler would span the decades, and excluding the years where the country was at war, Idea Cars were definitely part of their program.
These were the kind of magical styling exercises that got the public excited about a brand and gave them some looks into the future and trends and different things, ideas that could be highlighted in the coming years or generational influences for new models.
Exner's philosophy in these cars was simple but carried a dastardly level of difficulty to properly execute.
They had to incorporate new, practical styling concepts that could be executed in some form.
They had to add usable passenger enhancements and comforts, and they had to be fully functional.
In short, these were more than just rolling static display models made in-house.
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