Green Machines: Collection Classics: Streamlined Baby

Gregory Anderson

04/01/2007

In the summer of 1927, Carl Breer—then the head of engineering and research for Chrysler—was driving with his family to Lake Huron, when he noticed what he initially mistook for a distant flock of migratory waterfowl. But the flying birds “turned out to be a squadron of army planes heading for Selfridge Air Base over Lake St. Claire,” says Barry Dressel, manager of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich. In the automotive equivalent of Newton’s apple, Breer’s thoughts quickly turned to aerodynamics. The engineer stuck his hand out the window of his moving car and “the effect made Breer wonder how much power was wasted pushing against all that air resistance,” says Dressel.

So, like any good scientist, Breer set out to devise a controlled experiment. It just so happened that one of his engineers was acquainted with Orville Wright (the same aviation pioneer who had been flying with Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge when the military officer’s airplane crashed on September 17, 1908, making him the first casualty of powered flight and the eponymous namesake of the air field that eventually contributed to Breer’s inspiration). Enlisting Wright’s expertise, Breer’s team devised Chrysler’s first wind tunnel to test the effects of aerodynamics on the various flat-fronted automobiles of the era. In his book The Birth of Chrysler Corporation and its Engineering Legacy, Breer noted that these wind tunnel tests had shown a 30 percent increase running most vehicles backwards. “Our laboratory was on the fourth floor of engineering,” Breer wrote. “I looked out of the window at all the cars below and remarked, ‘Just think how dumb we have been. All these cars have been running in the wrong direction!’”

The Airflow project began as an effort to get better performance through reduced air resistance. However, according to Dressel, “Chrysler certainly wasn’t the only company     that had explored doing that; European car manufacturers had been examining those issues since the early 1920s.” So, while Breer may not have been the first to ponder the aerodynamics of the automobile—Paul Jaray’s Tatra Type V570 prototype being one notable example of a predecessor to the Chrysler and DeSoto Airflow—he was certainly among the first to apply his findings to a series-production automobile.

Conventional wisdom holds the Airflow as one of automotive history’s most serious miscalculations. Many blame a radical design that the marketplace considered too avant-garde. Not only was the Airflow uniquely smoothed-out at the front—engineers eliminated the vertical radiator and upright windshield—but it also sported a teardrop rear shape to quell the turbulent air that developed behind. The sloping rear end necessitated moving rear passengers forward, due to compromised headroom. “Rear passengers had been sitting over the rear axles since the days of horse-drawn carriages,” Dressel says. To make room for front occupants, engineers then moved part of the Airflow’s engine ahead its front axle.

Indeed the Airflow fundamentally changed car design. The teardrop form enabled Chrysler to create a fully enclosed rear trunk, whereas previous cars used external, folding racks to which trunks were strapped. It also permitted three-across seating in the front, whereas previous tapered bodies narrowed in the front cowl.

Dressler warns against assuming its appearance was solely at fault. “You hear that the car was not successful because people were turned off by its looks, which is only partially true,” he says. “It may not have been as handsome a car as the Lincoln Zephyr that followed, but neither was it plainly ugly, like many so-called aerodynamic designs of the late ’30s.” The auto industry quickly realized that this was the way to build an automobile; within a few years virtually every manufacturer would adopt some aspect of the Airflow’s design. Toyota built its first car—the Toyoda [sic] AA—as a near replica of the DeSoto Airflow. “But it wasn’t just Toyota,” says Dressel. “It was Peugeot, it was Volvo, it was Mercedes, it was Fiat; everybody, in one way or another, copied the Airflow design.”

Also problematic was the Airflow’s weight, the likely result of mistakes in adapting space-frame architecture borrowed from aircraft design. “The consultant they hired to make stress calculations probably overestimated how the body should be built, so they ended up with a heavy car,” Dressel explains. “It was an all-steel body, and it was on the way to being a unibody construction, so that you didn’t need this massive chassis underneath because the body as a unit added structural strength to the whole.”This isn’t to say the Airflow didn’t have significant dynamic advantages. The Airflow was a revelation to drive, compared to anything else on the market. “You drive something else from that period, in the same size and price range,” says Dressel, “and there’s a vast difference. You really feel like you’re riding a modern car. It rode smoothly, tracked better, turned better, and accelerated smoothly.” 

According to Dressel, what sold Walter Chrysler on the Airflow was its ride quality. "The spring ratios were tuned to roughly the same vibration frequency you would experience when walking." Chrysler had a name for this spongy handling effect—boulevard ride—for which American cars are often criticized. In 1934, though, the relatively comfortable ride was a revelation. The automotive mogul also appreciated the Airflow’s handling; an unintended consequence of redistributing the weight over both axles was to significantly reduce oversteer. And thanks to its decreased drag and a powerful straight 8-cylinder engine, that sent 122 bhp to the rear wheels, the car would easily exceed 90 mph.

But no amount of horsepower or handling could overcome the business decisions that hampered any chance of success the Airflow possessed. Walter Chrysler—convinced that the groundbreaking design would revolutionize the automotive industry—made a critical error when he asked his engineers for the impossible: Two distinct Airflow models with two unique drivetrains and a variety of wheelbases, all ready in an aggressive and previously unheard-of 18-month timetable. Blind to reality and anticipating full production by December of 1933, Chrysler showed the car at the New York Auto Show and began taking deposits. It wasn’t ready. Months passed, and the ultramodern Airflow barely trickled out of the factory. Worse, serious defects plagued early Airflows. "That really sealed its fate," says Dressel.

Even without problems brought on by an overambitious launch, the Airflow faced another significant hurdle. In a Depression year, the new car cost approximately 40 percent more than the models it replaced. After stumbling over its botched launch, the Airflow’s sales volume never recovered momentum. Chrysler produced fewer than 55,000 cars between its debut in 1934 and its demise only three years later.

Chrysler’s ads at the time proclaimed the Airflow as "the first automobile since the invention of the motorcar." That wasn’t necessarily marketing hyperbole. What they had achieved, says Dressel, "was to change the paradigm for the automobile."