“One startling result of our investigation,” Breer wrote, “was the realization that our cars were so poorly designed from an air resistant point of view that they would actually run faster backwards than forward.” The engineers watched as the air flowing around the models drew traces through the soot. Models made in the adjacent wood shop were placed against plates coated with linseed oil and lampblack, or the carbon soot left over from burning lamp oil. It was a compact unit not even 2 feet wide by 3 feet tall, driven by a 35-hp DC electric motor connected to fans with a V-belt. But no automaker had attempted to fuse the two forms of transportation in any meaningful way.īreer’s first step was to study how air flowed around a car, so he built the auto industry’s first wind tunnel. It’s no cosmic coincidence that the automobile and powered flight were invented at nearly the same moment both were a byproduct of advances in internal combustion. He was preoccupied with the rising speeds of the increasingly more powerful cars that were coming out-and with gazing skyward one day in 1927 at a formation of Army planes circling over his summer house at Gratiot Beach on Lake Huron north of Detroit. Chrysler loved.īreer’s mind was churning. The trio instantly meshed as a unit Zeder was the salesman, Skelton was a disciplined powertrain expert, and Breer was the dreamer, the guy who had the kind of crazy schemes that Walter P. Breer and Zeder had known each other since their apprenticeship days, and they met Skelton while at Studebaker. He immediately hired his so-called “Three Musketeers,” ex-Studebaker and Willys-Overland engineers Carl Breer, Owen Skelton, and Fred Zeder. Chrysler ran out of the house fire that was Willys-Overland and, after a few false starts, in 1925 incorporated Chrysler atop the bones of the ailing Maxwell Motor Company. A constant gyre of talent and ideas and investor cash saw companies rise and fall and merge and die seemingly overnight. The auto industry of the 1920s resembled freewheeling Silicon Valley in the 1990s. What a thrilling place to work the newly formed Chrysler Corporation must have been in its earliest days. Though the auto industry’s dustbin is full of pioneers that were doomed to be unappreciated in their moment, the Airflow is one of its most illustrious residents. Chrysler yanked it in defeat after the 1937 model year and turned its back on design flair for a generation. The Airflow was also a flop, soundly rejected by the buying public for the four short years of its existence. Its debut at the New York auto show on Saturday, January 6, 1934, made the newspapers around the nation, and its advancements in engineering and design foreshadowed almost every mass-produced car that followed, including the cars we drive today. The Chrysler Airflow-it was also called the Airflow Chrysler, the Airflow Imperial, and the DeSoto Airflow-was a lightning flash of innovation in the midst of the wretched Great Depression. Now we have the first real motor car in history.” “We had the horse and buggy,” enthused Walter P. Then he drove from New York to San Francisco in the same car, averaging 18 mpg and spending just $33.06 on gas. Indy veteran Harry Hartz set 72 speed and distance records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in one, driving 97.5 mph over the flying mile. Babe Ruth had one, as did actor Dick Powell. George Brown of Honolulu complained of being harassed by onlookers wherever she parked hers downtown. The transmission was also serviced at the same time as the engine rebuild and shifts well, with the clutch functioning as intended.The first one in Oregon rolled into Medford behind a state police escort. For enhanced reliability we’ve also added an electric fuel pump, as well as a 6-bladed fan to better cool the engine. A new aluminum head was fabricated and installed. The engine was completely rebuilt and balanced in the last two years and starts easily and runs smoothly as it should. The interior was fitted with tan cloth and brown vinyl bolsters following the correct pattern and seams, and shows excellent workmanship. To complete the exterior, all the chrome was redone, and the undercarriage was finished appropriately. The exterior was painted two-tone medium brown and light tan using metallic finish paint, which is appropriate given that Chrysler was one of the first to introduce metallic, or as they called it, polychromatic paint, in the mid-1930s. This rare Brougham has benefitted from a ground up restoration. This 1934 DeSoto Airflow Brougham Sedan offered for sale is one of only 4 Airflow Broughams known to exist. Much more text and pics in ad.(possibly a record for the longest text!) Price seems pretty unlikely to me but I'm not a fan of Airflows.as a Simca owner I am very aware that "very rare" does not equal "very valuable".
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