Summary

1956 Chrysler/Ghia Diablo was considered the ultimate concept car design by Virgil Exner. The execution of the body was done by Ghia of Italy. This is reportedly the largest convertible made by Ghia in the 1950s and the 1960s. Just under 21' long.

Details

The director of automotive design for Chrysler in 1953, Virgil Exner Sr., was given the responsibility to design all of Chrysler's concept cars starting in 1954. Exner quickly collaborated with Ghia, one of the best body builders in Italy, to execute several of his now famous concept show cars designs on production Chrysler chassis. All of these cars became famous show cars that are now legendary in the history of automotive design. According to Virgil Exner Jr., a legendary designer in his own right, one of the greatest design works and the most elaborate design by his father that was ever produced with the collaboration of Chrysler and Ghia was the 1956/1957 Chrysler Dart/Diablo. Not only did Virgil Exner execute the design for this car on his own personal drawing board but also his design was highly aided by the fact that the car was designed in a wind tunnel. The Diablo is one of the largest custom bodied convertibles ever built by the Ghia body builder and in its second phase it retained a full convertible top, the basic Dart design, four bucket seats and a star wars dashboard. The chassis used for this build was a new off the production line 1956 Chrysler 300 with a special modified engine with two 4 barrel carburetors, automatic push-button transmission and a ton of chrome in the engine compartment. Every detail on this car was fastidiously gone over by Virgil Exner. Note the Diablo pitchfork emblems, even an emblem on the gas filler lid which is in the trunk area. Check out the sculpting on the exhaust tips, which reportedly took Virgil several days on the drawing board to get the design just perfect. The car is also equipped with power steering, power brakes, power windows, power top, power antenna and air conditioning. The car is of enormous size just under 21' long and extremely wide. This car has been in the same important collection for approximately 25 years and wears the crown of one of the most important American dream cars/concept cars ever.