Back then Chrysler made the Falcon

FORD’S Falcon cars arrived in 1960 in both North America and Australia and sold in their millions in both countries.

But who knew that Chrysler also built Falcons – one of a very different feather, five years before Ford?

It was a concept car by Ghia from 1955 that unfortunately never reached mass production, but one of the three that were built still survives and still turns heads wherever it’s seen.

It’s owned by Joe Bortz, well-known in the US as a collector of concept, or ‘dream’ cars, and he’s very happy to have it.

“The front end of it 50 years later became the front end on the 2005 Chrysler 300,” Bortz said.

Indeed, if you compare the shape of the quarter panels and the front-end design of the 2005 Chrysler 300 to the 1955 Chrysler Falcon, you can see the influence of Falcon in the 300 production car, right down to its long bonnet and short tail proportions.

However, the two-passenger Falcon wasn’t intended to test ideas for a future Chrysler 300 model, which debuted the same year as a production car, but as a potential Thunderbird killer.

Ironically, Chrysler’s new C-300 killed the idea of building a Thunderbird fighter, as Chrysler considered the C-300 to already be a T-Bird competitor.

Automotive designer Virgil Exner Jr, whose father designed the two-passenger 1955 Chrysler Falcon, confirmed that his father’s Falcon concept car was designed to combat the then new 1955 Thunderbird and Corvette.

Although labelled as a Chrysler, the Falcon concept car was powered by a De Soto two-barrel, 276-cid (4.5-litre) Hemi V-8 backed by a PowerFlite automatic transmission.

By the time the 1955 Falcon show car debuted, Virgil Exner had been with Chrysler Corp for about five years.

He had cut his teeth on the Studebaker advertising account before finding employment during the Great Depression within the design studio of General Motors under Harley Earl.

From GM, Exner went to work designing Studebakers, and in 1949 swung to Chrysler Corp, where he would become the head of the company’s planned Advanced Styling Studio.

Chrysler’s management famously insisted that all Chrysler cars had to accommodate drivers wearing hats, regardless of how dated that made the cars look.

They hoped Exner would turn around the company’s dour image.

In less than a decade, Exner did just that, peaking with the finned ‘forward look’ Chrysler products of 1957.

After joining Chrysler, Exner quickly began drawing new and exciting car designs, many of which became full-size, three-dimensional concept cars.

Among them was the 1951 Chrysler K-310, 1952 Chrysler C-200, 1953 Chrysler D’Elegance, 1953 De Soto Adventurer and a handful of others in 1954 alone.

Most were sporty two-doors in coupe or convertible configuration, often for just two passengers.

By 1955, the design of Chrysler Corp production cars had hit their stride with looks that were as fashionably modern as anything from Ford and General Motors, its top competitors.

At the time the 1955 Chrysler Falcon was designed, Exner Jr was a college student and was keenly aware of his father’s design philosophies and his projects that employed them.

“At that time, he was trying to put forth more classic front ends instead of the wide mouths that were going on at the time,” he said.

“That was his pride, and anything really with fins. He was always aware of aerodynamic design, and always preferred that and the simplicity of design.

“One of this favourite phrases was: ‘Simplicity is the keynote of good design.’”

The Falcon is a sleek two-passenger car with minimal but effective ornamentation and shapes.

Deep-set headlights brace an essentially oval grille that graces only the centre of the front end.

The front mudguards have a prow edge that leads a clean, front-to-back flank with chrome decoration only seen in the edge of the front louvre and the (non-functional) side exhaust, along with the balance of lower-body trim aft of the rear wheel openings.

The vertical tail lights are mounted in the rear mudguard tips and are divided by likewise upright-mounted bumper bars, with a horizontal bumper bar set low at the rear.

A deep wrap-around windshield caps off the clean design.

“In the 1950s, all cars had chrome all over them and on the side, wherever you could put it, and that car was done as an artistic masterpiece and didn’t need to be decorated like a Christmas tree,” Bortz said.

Top up or down, the Chrysler Falcon cuts a strikingly personal profile.

Factory photos show two Falcons with 15-inch wheel covers, each of a different design, and one with the 15-inch wire wheels on this survivor.

As with many dream cars of the period, Chrysler contracted coach-building firm Ghia in Italy to build the Falcon.

Chrysler supplied Ghia with drawings, specifications, a clay model and the chassis.

Ghia would often make minor adjustments in building a body on the chassis and then ship the completed car back to the United States, and did so on this car.

Chrysler was able to avoid paying duties on the Ghia-built show cars if it shipped them out of the US or scrapped the cars within two years.

While the show cars were in the US, Chrysler would show them and some employees, such as Exner, were allowed to use them.

The Falcon was exposed to the public at the Chrysler Building in New York and was also among those that Exner occasionally drove.

Three were built by Ghia at a cost of USD $20,000. One was red, one light blue and the third was gold, which Exner had repainted to black.

Exner’s son recalls the black one his father drove being a head-turner while out on the road.

“It really stunned them,” he said.

Virgil Exner took the black Falcon to Watkins Glen in 1956 and drove it on the track there.

Besides the colour, this car differs from the featured car owned by Joe Bortz, with wheel covers and a crank hole in the grille.

With a 170-hp (125kW) De Soto FireDome Hemi V8 and PowerFlite automatic transmission in its 105-in.-wheelbase chassis, the Falcon provided a spirited driving experience.

Had it been given a 300-hp (223kW) V8 from a Chrysler C-300, the experience would certainly have been even more exhilarating.

Of the three Falcons originally built, only Bortz’s example is known to remain.

New EQS stretches the friendship

He believes it was one of the concept cars shipped out of the US before duties had to be paid on it, and as a result, it was saved rather than destroyed.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, Bortz was searching for and collecting Ghia-built Chrysler concepts to display alongside his General Motors concepts.

He found the Falcon offered for sale by a used car dealer in New Jersey who made him feel nervous about the transaction, so he wanted to seal the deal and get out as quickly as possible.

“I felt very uneasy about sending him the payment and then waiting for a transport company to pick it up, so I arranged for a cashier’s check and flew out to buy the car,” Bortz said.

“I called some local guy who said he was a transporter, and he was supposed to meet me there at a certain time so I could pay for it and load it up and drive back with him in the cab.

“When the flatbed arrived, it was being driven by two kids. One was 16, one was 18, because the owner was too busy to come pick it up.

“The transporter was a broken down flatbed truck, and I was going to ride with them, but they hadn’t slept that night and the driver started driving off the road.

“I said, ‘Move over, I am going to drive’!”

It was a horrible trip, but I got the car home.

“At one time, I owned 10 Ghia cars that were designed by Virgil Exner, but there was no comparison — this was totally the stand out,” Bortz added. “

The dealer also had a Mercedes 540K roadster, and at the time, I said, ‘I really like this car better than the 540K roadster,’ and that’s a pretty good-looking car.”

Since buying the Falcon about 40 years ago, Bortz has had to only maintain it.

He doesn’t know much of its history before he purchased it, but believes it was repainted, perhaps in South America, as it now wears a light-green metallic colour on its body.

Joe Bortz has since sold his other Ghia cars, but kept the Falcon since it’s one of his favourites.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous,” he said.

Footnote: The Falcon name was not owned by Chrysler or Ford. Twenty-one years earlier, the Riley company of Britain, established in 1890 and makers of bicycles and later cars, released a 1.5-litre saloon called the Riley Falcon.

It was a fine car with a neat swept-back tail that was produced until 1935.