Hemmings classic car october 2019 I Hemmings.com
chrysler
class
I
cs
52
Unfortunately for Chrysler, the look
of the Airflow polarized the public. It
was truly a love-it-or-hate-it design. There
were plenty of people clamoring to
buy the new car, but production delays
soured even some of those enthusiastic
customers. Though Chrysler abandoned
the aerodynamic look, automotive styl-
ists in the coming years adopted some
of the Airflow’s characteristics, such as
headlamps fully enclosed in the fenders.UNIBODY
All American passenger cars today
feature unit-body construction, with
the body, chassis, and frame a single
combined structure for rigidity and light
weight. Chrysler first experimented with
a type of unibody on the 1934 Airflow,
where the body was welded to the frame
for strength. Other American manufac-
turers had also introduced unit-body
automobile chassis, most notably Nash
in 1941, but Chrysler went all-in for- Except for the Imperial, all Chrysler
models in the 1960s had the unitized body
and chassis. Even though today the term
“unibody” has become a common word,
it was Chrysler’s trademark name for the
construction type at the time.
“FLOATING POWER”
ENGINE MOUNTS
Before Chrysler developed its Floating
Power mounting system, engines rigidly
mounted to the frame would transmit
vibrations throughout the chassis, particu-
larly four-cylinder models. Introduced in
1932, Floating Power reduced the mount-
ing points from three or more rigid ones
to just two with rubber components: one
high and at the front of the engine, and the
other low and at the rear of the engine at
the transmission, and both in line with the
center of the powerplant. With Floating
Power, the engine didn’t so much as “float”
between the rails, but the less rigid mount-
ing allowed the engine to “rock slightly,”
according to Chrysler literature of the day.HIGH-COMPRESSION
ENGINE
The first Chrysler Six was one of the first
mass-produced cars to take advantage of
the improvements in knock resistance that
the engineers at GM has discovered in
tetraethyl lead. The engine in the Chrysler
Six produced 68 horsepower from just
201-cu.in. of displacement, owing a great
deal to its 4.8:1 compression ratio. Its seven
main bearings certainly helped the Chrysler
Six’s durability and reliability in the long
run. Chrysler gave its initial model the “70”