of chrysler even today and far more so
than the other major auto manufacturers you think of innovation
and you think of excitement walter chrysler was a transportation visionary
his father worked for the railroads and his first job was sweeping up for the railroad he developed
locomotives and was noted as a premier locomotive designer in the united states at the turn of
the century he was looking beyond trains though he was looking at other modes of transportation
and saw the growing popul
arity of automobiles locomobile at a major auto show and decided i have
to learn more about what makes this vehicle tick walter chrysler went significantly into debt
by one and a half times his annual income got the car disassembled it and figured out
what made cars work and that sent him on his path to success he became a very
valuable asset within general motors by 1912 we see that he's making well
over twenty five thousand dollars a year threatens to leave general motors general motors
implores him to stay and walter agrees to stay on at the unheard of salary of five hundred thousand
dollars a year in world war one dollars works for three years at this rate and then announces i have
had enough and i'm going to leave general motors all of this led to the development of his own
company and the first chrysler automobile in 1924 and what set chrysler automobiles apart
from their competition was engineering all of this set the stage for his first truly
great series of cars the
eight cylinder imperials this car is a 1932 chrysler imperial
folks are attracted to the cars lines this car is a flagship of the chrysler fleet
and when folks understand that it's built by christ or they're they're really amazed they
did not know that christ would build a car of such stature one feature about this car
it always looks like it's in motion even when that car is sitting still it looks like
it's going down the road and the car never fails to draw a crowd when that car sits som
eplace
from the records we believe that 50 of the dual windshield five passenger fans were
built uh 14 of those cars were sold in 1932 and of those 14 cars as far as we're able to tell
there are only three of these cars that survive well this car was built first in
the in the middle of the depression and i understand that uh during that time that if
you were to drive a car like this around that you may well get a rock through your windshield
or a rotten egg thrown against you back then tho
se cars were dark blues and many shades of
greens and grays and today we might consider them to be somewhat mundane colors but those
colors reflected in times of auto show in 1932 and was purchased uh by a professor from chicago
and he drove the car until approximately 1937 at which time he sold it to a couple fellows that
were 16 years old one of the boys had a driver's license and no money and the other fellow had
money but no driver's license so the chap with the driver's license did the
chauffeuring and
the owner set the back seat and they must have made quite a spectacle cruising the hotels in
chicago and buzzing the doorman and taking off i can get in that car and i could drive
to new york tonight if i could stay awake the car travels at highway speeds
it is uh has excellent acceleration it has a reasonable gas mileage and by that i
mean about 8 mile like 8 or 9 miles to the gallon but it's a completely dependable
car and it's a pleasure to drive when i took my job at
chrysler there was a sign
up on the wall that showed a clinch fist and it said the pride is back and i walked in that
plant and i was kind of overwhelmed by that poster on the wall and i had my cars
already when i went to work there and that was a great feeling to go to work for
chrysler and to be involved in the cars the success of chrysler's cars in the early
1930s led walter and his design team to go to even greater extremes in studying the automobile
they realized that aerodynamically
it was a mess in many cases cars were slicker going
backwards than they were forwards given a clean slate the chrysler engineering team
came up with the most innovative production car of the period the airflow here trying to do the
very thing that every other motorist in the world is trying not to do he swings the wheel there it
double goes and lands on his feet nimble as a cat oh he's stuck come on boy nope
he pulls out under his own power i'll say that car deserves a cure it was the first
automobile in major production to use the space cage type of frame construction where the body
panels are welded to an outer frame it's very much in use in today's modern cars it was revolutionary
in that period from an engineering standpoint it had everything possible going for it and from a
marketing standpoint it was an absolute disaster with the advent of the airflow chrysler broke
new ground not just in the design of the car but in the brochure which was a bizarre and
flamboyant effo
rt with orange and magenta overlays only one of which served any purpose to show the
structure of the car by 1936 we see a dramatic restyling of the air flows they're made to
look more like a conventional automobile supercars and it is longer wider and taller
than the regular car it was a specialty item and the records show that 83 cars were built this
particular car was built for major bowls who had the amateur hour back in the 30s and the
40s which was the largest radio show ever and he d
iscovered people like frank sinatra the
andrew's sister sylvia sills and the list goes on and on and this car was built for him to
tour the country in a talent search to go from town to town every saturday or sunday whenever
they had the the gong show as it was known the motors major balls amateur hour when you listen to one of them now it was terribly
corny but then i do really look forward to on sunday afternoon to listen to the
major bulls amateur hour and may i for the chrysler corporat
ion for the amateurs
and for myself wish you good evening friends and the interior was all custom the jump seats
were one thing they just don't turn out they they roll out and they swivel and they have a
fold up arm rest and the foot rest opens up and has room for a walking stick and umbrella the
cushions are down filled it has electric razor and the desk with the fountain pen and pencil
and stationary they had a bar that pulled out and it had decaturs and cocktail shaker and it
was just t
erribly fancy there's a lot of gold and jade and silver and endura gold trim all
through the interior of the rear compartment after it toured the country it went back to
chrysler gave it to the navy admiral nimitz used it and took it to hawaii with him well he was
a commander-in-chief of the of the navy over the whole pacific fleet how it got back to the states
i'd love to know but it was found in pasadena california behind a used car lot just kind of
abandoned it was for sale for about thr
ee years and everybody just turned and run and i decided
it was something that i should do so here it is while the airflow may have been a dramatic looking
car by modern standards still didn't capture the public's imagination chrysler wished to regain
that sense of style leadership and they did so in an extraordinary dramatic way in 1941 with
the introduction of the first town in countries although walter chrysler died in 1940 his
beloved town and country project lived on as it was introduc
ed in 1941 it became a major
immense hit the chrysler town and country car is designed to give the all-round utility
and informality of the station wagon but it also offers colorful beauty spacious
comfort and all the speed ease of handling and safety that we are accustomed to in the
cars we use for our personal transportation my brother was in world war ii and
after the service came in home in 1946 and uh he had saved his money during the war as
his war bride had and he went down and boug
ht him a brand new town and country convertible 1946 and
at the time my being about 12 years old i thought it was the absolute most beautiful car that
i've ever seen in my life i had never my being a kid and raised in tennessee i'd never seen many
brand new cars to start with you know with the war not being any made in uh four or five
years so i was just completely amazed at at the way the car looked oh i said at the time
i said one day i will have a town in country and after many years wen
t by i did manage to get uh
it was a car that you just could not leave outside in the weather my brother at the time did not
have a garage to keep the car in so he wintered it outside and after the first one my grandfather got
his plane out he planes the wood to get the doors to close and they swelled and also the second
winner he had a small accident with the car and he jumped the car he sold it to a wrecking yard
for 75 dollars but they are was generally known as the cars of the stars and
the people in hollywood
a lot of the people in hollywood owned the cars and they knew better and had better ways of
taking care of them than we did in tennessee they were hand-built the wood
bodies was built in helena arkansas they were white ash and honduras mahogany
panels the spotlights in the 40s and early 50s you didn't have a spotlight in those years you
you wasn't anybody you just had to have that as a extra in your car i like all wooden body cars
really but my favorite is the town
ing country and i decided to when i was able to get
a hold of one of the real rare cars i decided to start trying to get the best
collection of town and country as they were i have i think it's eight of them
that is fully restored very nice car with the success of the town and country chrysler
needed an encore and they had a sensational one with the introduction of their hemi engine
vehicles in 1951 and to bring it all together chrysler revamped the entire line in 1955
and came up with wha
t was known as the 100 million dollar look they introduced
the first luxury hot rod the 300 series this car that uh i'm using as a backrest
is a 1960 300 f and goes like hill the black one uh is a 1963 300 j there was only
400 ever made that also goes like hell you don't drive it you aim it you feel that you're behind
a mass of machinery that's invincible that if one of these little cars get in your way you have no
trouble just driving up and over it or through it i started racing in 1949 a
t that particular time
there were basically no rules it was whoever got to the finish line by whatever method would be
the winner my parents didn't know i was doing that and at one race in ohio uh i did an end over
end flip five times and broke my right arm well i went to the hospital and i put my arm in a
cast my parents knew that i was going to be gone until sunday evening well when sunday evening came
it's time to go home that cast had to come off so i suffered for weeks i come home and
of
course i did have some scratches on my arm and i just gave the explanation to my folks
that i tripped and fell down on some glass and dad never really believed me through the
years mom took a hook line and sinker there were a number of options that were available out of the ordinary so to speak
you had a a town and country radio when you're in town it would pick up all the
local stations very easily you'd push a button on the radio that said distance and you'd bring
in the far-reaching
stations when you're out in the country in 1959 chrysler come out with swivel
seats and you sit down on the seat and you pick up your feet swing into the driver's compartment
and lock yourself in and there you were the chrysler 300 was effectively the first
american muscle car and the brochure reflects this with a spotlit racetrack setting a checkered flag
and the proud declaration that it was america's most powerful car mom had a 57 300 that dad had
bought her and uh he came to me one day
and said uh you sell the imperial that i had at that
time and i will give you the 300. of course i questioned why he says well your mom's gonna kill
herself because she's worn out three sets of rear tires complains that the car has no getaway
from the red lights i said well okay sold my imperial within two weeks and called up dad and
it overcame the 57 300 and that started it all well i was taking uh my 1960 300 uh out for a
ride headed out on the road early sunday morning just let the car
have its head and before i knew
it uh there's a bunch of police cars down the road with the red lights and blue lights flashing
it was me they were after a policeman had put a radar gun on me and said that i was doing 135
miles an hour then when i went to court the judge did not believe that that old 1960 chrysler would
go that fast and he thought there was reasonable doubt there and i got off with 42.50 in court
cost and no fines and no points on my license the letter series ended with the
production year
in 1965. that was the 300l uh the popularity of the car was slowly dying out you're getting into
the gas guzzler era and people wanted a car that's more economical and softer riding chrysler was not
able to weather well the oil shocks and certainly the dramatic financial requirement changes of the
automobile industry in the 1970s they'd lost track of themselves and their market and by the late
1970s were brought to the brink of insolvency in light of this great crisis chrys
ler needed a
savior that person was lee iacocca iacocca had a pedigree from years at ford came out on the
short end of the stick against henry ford ii and was ready for the challenge of chrysler by
convincing the united states government that an investment in chrysler was an investment in the
nation's automotive future the loan was secured when i see a chrysler badge i immediately think of
1924 i think of a walter chrysler putting together a car that was so technically superior to anything
of that time chrysler has always managed to mix a very pleasing blend of engineering and styling
and i think that our cars are on top of the world i just have a tender place for for these chrysler
products i guess you know i just born and raised uh around them then i guess
i just don't know any better so you
Comments