Chrysler Airflow
| Chrysler Airflow | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Chrysler |
| Production | 1934–1937 |
| Assembly | Highland Park, Michigan, United States |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | Full-size car |
| Body style | 4-door sedan 2-door coupe |
| Layout | FR layout |
| Related |
Chrysler Imperial Chrysler Royal DeSoto Airflow |
| Powertrain | |
| Engine | 299 cu in (4,900 cc) cast-iron-block 122 horsepower (91 kW) L-head inline 8-cylinder engine(1934); 323.5 cu in (5,301 cc) cast-iron-block 130 horsepower (97 kW) 250 lb.ft.torque L-head inline 8-cylinder engine(1937) |
| Transmission | 3-speed manual floor shift |
| Dimensions | |
| Wheelbase | CW Airflow Custom Imperial: 146.5 in (3,721 mm) Airflow Eight: 123.5 in (3,137 mm) CV Airflow Imperial Eight: 128.0 in (3,251 mm) CX Airflow Custom Imperial 137.5 in (3,492 mm) |
| Chronology | |
| Successor | Chrysler Windsor |
The Chrysler Airflow is a full-size car produced by Chrysler from 1934 to 1937. The Airflow was one of the first full-size American production car to use streamlining as a basis for building a sleeker automobile, one less susceptible to air resistance. Chrysler made a significant effort at a fundamental change in automotive design with the Chrysler Airflow, but it was ultimately a commercial failure.
Chrysler also marketed a companion model under the DeSoto brand, the DeSoto Airflow.
The basis for the Chrysler Airflow was rooted in Chrysler Engineering's Carl Breer's curiosity about how forms affected their movement through the environment. According to Chrysler, Breer's quest was started while watching geese travel through the air in a "V" flight pattern. Another source lists Breer as watching military planes on their practice maneuvers, while still other sources attach the genesis of the project to Breer's interest in lighter-than-air airships and how their shapes helped them move through the atmosphere.
Breer, along with fellow Chrysler engineers Fred Zeder and Owen Skelton, began a series of wind tunnel tests, with the cooperation of Orville Wright, to study which forms were the most efficient shape created by nature that could suit an automobile. Chrysler built a wind tunnel at the Highland Park site, and tested at least 50 scale models by April 1930. Their engineers found that then-current two-box automobile design was so aerodynamically inefficient, that it was actually more efficient turned around backwards. Applying what they had learned about shape, the engineers also began looking into ways that a car could be built, which also used monocoque (unibody) construction to both strengthen the construction (the strengthening was used in a publicity reel) of the car while reducing its overall drag, and thus increasing the power-to-drag ratio as the lighter, more streamlined body allowed air to flow around it instead of being caught through upright forms, such as radiator grilles, headlights and windshields.
...
Wikipedia