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2026 Honda Ridgeline ReviewThe Space Age Plymouth XNR Makes Fallout Cameo
The most glamorous of the Chrysler/Ghia concepts got another day in the sun when the 1960 Plymouth XNR popped up on the set of the new Fallout series.
Exner’s XNR was the Car of Futures Past
It is not often that a hyper-rare one-off concept car of historical significance pops up in the background of a major dramatic television series, but that is just what happened when the Plymouth XNR concept was spotted being used as an automotive extra in Amazon’s new Fallout series. For those who obsess over automotive obscura like the XNR, the cameo was a real holy *cow* moment and perfectly befitting the show’s midcentury modern/Space Age aesthetic. According to reports, this was not a reproduction either, but the real, one-and-only Plymouth XNR concept from 1960.
So, what is the Plymouth XNR? One of the defining concept cars of the era, a swan song to finned cars, and the crowning jewel of legendary designer Virgil Exner’s storied career. The car’s unusual provenance, how it survived both the crusher and a civil war, is as compelling as its singular design.
Wild Chrysler/Ghia Concepts
Jumping into our once-upon-a-time machine, we travel back to the 1950s and the heyday of fins and chrome. One of Chrysler’s lead designers was Virgil Exner who had been at work modernizing Chrysler’s designs and drawing inspiration from the booming aerospace industry. The streamlining and fins of Exner’s “Forward Look” designs provided an element perpetual movement even when the cars were standing still.
During this time, Exner worked with Luigi Serge of Ghia, the Italian coachworks. Ghia was Chrysler’s go-to for design and fabrication work on their concept cars. These Chrysler/Ghia concepts, many of them designed by Exner, have become the stuff of automotive legend and include the Chrysler Special, the Chrysler Falcon (before Chrysler sold the naming rights to Ford), the Super Dart 400, the Dodge Firearrow concepts I, II, III, and IV, and the Firebomb concept which evolved into the Dual-Ghia production car. Exner’s work with Serge not only resulted in the Dual-Ghia but also the much more well-known Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, which was an evolution of Exner’s Chrysler D’Elegance concept design.
Building the XNR
One of the final Chrysler/Ghia concepts was the Plymouth XNR which began as sketches in 1958, taking two years before making it to construction. Exner initially titled the concept car the Asymmetrica, drawing inspiration from his own Studebaker Indy car and from the Jaguar D-type racecar with its off-center cockpit and vertical rear stabilizer.
As the name suggested, Exner’s design played heavily on the theme of asymmetry. The car features a continuous line beginning with an air intake and hump on the hood off-set to the driver’s side. This feature blends into the driver’s windshield and seating position and continues on thereafter to form a single vertical fin extending to the back of the car. The door panels too are asymmetrical as are the driver’s and passenger’s windshields and the dual exhaust which is combined and piped to the driver’s side. The passenger’s position is set four inches lower than the driver to mitigate drag and when the seat is not in use there is a body-matching tonneau cover so that the car resembles a single seat speedster.
Even the engine is asymmetrical. Under the clamshell hood is a 170 cu.-in. NASCAR-tuned slat-six making an impressive 250 horsepower and paired with a three-speed manual. In testing, Exner himself was able to get the car up to 142 mph. With subsequent tweaks to the engine and aerodynamics, the Plymouth XNR was taken all the way to 150 mph at the Chrysler proving grounds.
The interior of the car was outfitted in black leather with aluminum trim. The instrument panel was fashioned after camera equipment and the removeable glove box doubled as a camera case, all owing to Exner’s passion for photography. Because the car was such a pure expression of Exner’s design ethos, it was rechristened the XNR after its designer.
Following its promotional tour in 1960, Exner had hoped to keep his namesake concept, as Harley Earl had once done with his Buick Y-Job. Alas, import duties levied on the car precluded this but rather than send the car to the crusher, as was standard practice for concept cars, Chrysler shipped the XNR back across the Atlantic to Ghia in Italy.
The Plymouth XNR’s Whirlwind Provenance Explained
For most concept cars, this would be the end of the story, tucked away as just another relic collecting dust in that warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not so with the Plymouth XNR, however. Rather than keep the car, Ghia sold it to a Swiss businessman who in turn sold it to the Shah of Iran Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, an avid car collector. The Shah sold the XNR off to Kuwait, as documented in the May 1969 edition of National Geographic magazine. From here the Plymouth XNR found its way to Beirut, Lebanon.
There, the car languished in storage and obscurity for years. That was until car enthusiast Karim Ebbe got wind of it. Always on the hunt for something special, Ebbe had scouts in the city who kept a lookout for anything unusual and one day they spotted a very odd-looking, Ferrari-like car stowed away in a parking garage. This was the XNR. Ebbe bought the car, storing it in an underground parking garage while the Lebanese civil war raged (1975-90). In that time, Ebbe was forced to move the car many times to keep it from danger, towing the car as flatbed trucks were unavailable.
Eventually, Ebbe initiated the car’s restoration, shipping it to RM Restorations in Onterio, Canada. The process took a full two years, from 2009 through 2011. Though the car was in relatively good shape, many parts needed replacement, including rebuilding the 35-piece hubcaps from scratch. Thankfully, the amount of press the XNR had originally garnered aided the restorers in their efforts as the car’s numerous intricacies were well documented.
The fully restored Plymouth XNR made appearances at the Amelia Concourse and Pebble Beach in 2011. It sold at auction that year for $935,000 to Paul Gould, an investment banker and car collector. The XNR was actually Gould’s second Chrysler/Ghia concept car as he was already the owner of the Dart Diablo concept. It was under Gould’s auspices that the Plymouth XNR got another day in the sun with its pitch perfect cameo on the Fallout series.
