CHRYSLER AIRFLOW 1930

CHRYSLER AIRFLOW 1930

The Airflow today resembles a seminal example of motorized Art Deco. It wasan extremely adventurous car for Chrysler but, sadly, a disaster in sales terms.

Company founder Walter Chrysler had great faith in a team of consultant engineers nicknamed the “Three Musketeers”—Carl Breer, Fred Zeder, and Owen Skelton. It was Breer’s fascination with aerodynamics that led the trio to map out America’s first mainstream car with this science as its guiding principle. By 1930, they had tested over 50 different experimental models in awind tunnel constructed with input from aviation pioneer Orville Wright.

To improve ride and handling of what became the Airflow, they shifted the engine forward over the front wheels and positionedthe passenger seats within the wheelbase, for better weight distribution.

The Airflow’s scientifically shaped lines were ahead of their time, and proved a bit too futuristic for the tastes of car buyers in the mid-1930s.

To cut weight they also devised a one-piece body with a lightweight metal frame (as opposed to the more common heavy, timber framing).

Early Airflows were, apparently, fraught with quality problems because of new welding techniques. But the main problem with sales was public resistance. Buyers preferred their cars to be more traditional- looking than the amorphous visage and faired-in wheels of the Airflow.

Ironically, in an attempt to boost sales, the car was actually made less aerodynamic in 1936 when a prominent trunk was added to its tapering tail but, by then, Chrysler’s more traditional cars were outselling it massively. It was axed after 1937.