Page 5 - The Kellner Affair Sample Pages

CHAPTER 1: THE RISE Of AERODyNAMICS
1931 French generic design showing some fender skirting, the body side extended to the running board so that it covered the chassis rails, and a rounded trunk. (La Carrosserie)
1931 proposal for a conduite intérieure on a Unic chassis. French proto-aerodynamic design was not exactly avant-garde in the early 1930s. (La Carrosserie)
Famously, Breer is quoted as looking out the window and saying: “Just think how dumb we have been. All those cars have been running in the wrong direction!” In the end, Breer and his team arrived at much the same conclusion as Rumpler, Jaray, Burney and Tjaarda had before them: the perfect aerodynamic shape was a teardrop where a rounded front tapered off at the rear. In addition, Breer realized that since a more streamlined body allowed air to ow around it, it was important to minimize resistance from the upright forms of the necessary accessories attached to it.
The rst new Chrysler wind tunnel models were made secretly in late 1930. When the nished car hit the streets in 1934, apart from a ground-breaking and wind-cheating design never seen before on a mass-produced automobile, it incorporated a space frame instead of a ladder chassis and improved weight distribution. The entire body was an all-metal construction, with not a single scrap of wood in it. Had anybody in the artisanal French coachbuilding
industry been paying attention to the construction side of things – which they weren’t – that in itself should have been cause for some unease. Virtually all accessories were integrated into the body, which gave the Air ow an entirely new look: the radiator was hidden behind a sloping waterfall grille, the headlights anking the grille were semi- ush and integrated into the curving body, while the split vee windshield was inclined. The front fenders went all the way down to the bumper and enclosed the tire. The rear of the car curved down in a fastback shape, and the rear wheels were skirted.
The public hated it. To say that a car was ahead of its time sounds cliché, but in the case of the Air ow, it was an understatement. The average Joe could just not comprehend what he was looking at, and while sales were respectable the rst six months, for the most part Joe let his wallet stay where it was in the Chrysler showroom and took it out elsewhere. Like the Citroën Traction Avant, which ironically was also introduced in 1934, the Air ow was plagued by
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