Car Lust

The Aero-Trail: a 21st Century Trailer

A good friend of mine who is a local automotive reporter and fellow racing nut suggested wanting a really modern trailer to take to Florida and leaving it there for future trips. It got me excited. I've designed many power boats before, but never thought of designing a travel trailer. This is my first attempt.

Now, I'll have to design a matching tow vehicle.

--Virgil M. Exner, Jr.

Download a PDF of the Aero-Trail by clicking here

The DeSoto Adventurer I -- My Favorite Show Car of All Time

Regardless of having been associated with great car designs and car designers all of my life, my favorite show car of all time has to be the 1953 DeSoto Adventurer I. My father designed it in 1952 as the Director of Advanced Styling for Chrysler Corporation.

Father actually started the design at our home in Birmingham, Michigan, with scale drawings and then modeled the 1/4 scale adaptation in clay in his office "back room" along with one of his favorite modelers, Ron Martin. Ron was the son of my father's clay modeler at GM Styling, George Martin, when Father was the Chief Designer of Pontiac from 1936 through 1938. Ron also brought the first use of fiberglass casting to Chrysler Styling, and the Adventurer model was the first to be cast in fiberglass and shipped to Ghia in Italy for the full size show car to be developed. Prior to that the scale models were cast in plaster and always subject to cracking of the beautiful finishes.

Project Terrapin: a Design for a "Turtle Deck" Roadster

Lately, my design blood has been really bubbling. I guess I'm just anxious to forget playing on my computer and getting back to modeling and twisting a wrench. Here's my latest idea: a "Turtle Deck" roadster which emulates a little more antique version of the 1932 Studebaker two man Indianapolis racer my father once owned.

The Silver Bullet

This design for an electric-powered car was my submission to the League of Retired Automobile Designers' show at the Studebaker National Museum last year.

Studebaker Week: Studebakers for the 21st Century

(Car Lust contributor Virgil Exner, Jr. celebrated Studebaker Week by designing a few Studebakers of his own and sending us some high-resolution renderings. Click the pictures to enlarge them and read Mr. Exner's commentary. -- Ed.)

Revolutionary Efficiency

(Note from Chris: We're very proud to welcome Virgil Exner Jr. as an official Car Lust contributor. Mr. Exner is of course the son of famous designer Virgil Exner of Forward Look fame, and a distinguished automotive designer in his own right. He previously contributed a rebuttal to Cookie the Dog's Owner's original Stutz Blackhawk piece.)

Hello Car Lust readers, I'm very happy to be aboard as a contributor to the blog and hope you will enjoy my input.

My wife and I recently returned from a short vacation in St. Martin in the Caribbean, and I had an opportunity to rent a virtually new India-produced Hyundai i-10 four-door hatchback. It had all of the accessories as our 2008 two-door Ford Focus, and both of us thought it was really great. It got 27 mpg for more than 200 miles around that hilly and traffic-jammed island and drove and handled just as well as the Focus. Our Focus gets 19 mpg in more favorable traffic and on flatter roads. I thought the Hyundai would make the Focus feel heavy when we returned to our car, and it did.