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Updated: 14 May 2008, 14:05 ET
(Created 01 Aug 2002)
[Ref: This is chryslr5.html (URL http://home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/chryslr5.html )]

S. Berliner, III's

Chrysler

Continuation Page 5

Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher

CHRYSLER Continuation Page 5

This site has now been visited times since the counter was installed.

(The original Chrysler page, et seq., grew completely out of hand and this had to be added;
please have a look at it, the Chrysler Continuation Page 1, the Chrysler Continuation Page 2,
the Chrysler Continuation Page 3, and
the Chrysler Continuation Page 5!)

These pages are basically unindexed but a HELP section is now on the preceding page and the Chrysler Links section is being recreated.

Chrysler Imperial 8.

'31-'32-'33 Imperial 8 Major Model Year Differences.

plus much more on Cont. Page 4.

Imperial L-80/L*80 - the "Big Six".

Jeep (moved to Chrysler page 1 on 02 Jul .

Model Chryslers.

On this Chrysler Continuation Page 5:

'39 and '41 Photos - moved to this page on 11 Nov 03.

Miscellaneous Chrysler Photos - moved to this page on 11 Nov 03.

Dodge Power Wagon.

Chrysler and Mercedes inked their $3billion+ merger and DaimlerChrysler AG/Corporation began business on 17 Nov 98 and started trading combined shares on 18 Nov 98; two of my most favo(u)rite cars!

HELP! - What is the approved substitute for Gýrol Fluid Drive coupling fluid? (14 May 08)

[Material on Chrysler Cont. Page 4 was moved to this page on 11 Nov 03 to make room for additional Chrysler Imperial 8 material.]

YET MORE CHRYSLER APOCRYPHA and MISCELLANY

(moved to this page on 11 Nov 03)

'39 and '41 Photos

Here she is - "brand new" - the 1939 Chrysler Royal 6 sedan, my first car (in 1952)! That's one happy teen! This was either taken around Thanksgiving 1952, when I bought her, or Christmas 1952, when I came home to Cedarhurst, Long Island, to take her up to Champlain College in Plattsburg(h):

Dig that crazy clip-on bow tie (I still have it, but never wear it), the nerdy hornrims (the frames long-since disintegrated), and the deckled edges and self-album ends on some of the prints.

Aha! Note the sealed-beam headlamp conversions; I installed them during the 1952-53 Christmas-New Year break!

Next, here are her left and right sides at our next house, in Lawrence, making it Fall of 1953:

I added those early MG wing lamps (parking lights) on the fenders after the sealed-beam conversion did away with the internal parking lamps behind the separate lenses in the old headlamp housings.

Then, I slid into that coil-sprung '48{?} Buick on Thanksgiving eve, 1953, and the result was grim:

The first shows how the Buick bumper crushed in the front fenders, sealed-beam conversions, and my fog lamp (which had a dark amber lens), and bent the bullnose; the plank between the firewall and the radiator top tank kept the bent but unbroken radiator core off the fan hub. The other photo is cropped from a large one; that's the streamlined rear and the cars in the garage should be Dad's '54 Imperial 8 (l.) and Mom's hand-me-down '53 Imperial 8 (r.).

I'd never noticed before; the crash wiped out my elaborate (but stock) Art-Deco over-riders and cross-bars entirely! Funny, the bumper dips as if to accomodate a crank but there's no crank hole in the bullnose (I had a similar situation on my 1954 Anglia).

Ohmygosh! If you look very carefully through the vertical grille bars below the bullnose, you can see a crank hole through the radiator bottom tank, even though there was no access to it! The Anglia had no such hole in the bottom tank, but did have one in the front sheet metal and in the bumper - go figure!

I'd paid $85 for the '39 and got $100 on trade (unrepaired!) for the $350 '41 Windsor 6 Sedan that had been in salt water to its seat-top height after a hurricane:

Note how similar the basic bodies are. I drove her up to Rensselaer and a buddy turned up with an identical car:

Here's a slightly different shot; I only post it because it shows clearly the 1940-style radiator opening with the 1941 chrome bars extending beyond it to the fenders. On the '40s, the bars all were the same width, top to bottom:

For the rare '42s, the lower bars continued around the fenders.

Note that the leaves are out on the first '41 pictures but gone on the last (and the cowl vent is shut).

Also, remember that '39s had running boards, '40s were available without them on custom order, and '41s only had them on custom order. '42s were basically not available, period!

By way of contrast, here's my "baby" sister ca. 1945 or 46 sitting on the hood of Dad's 1941 Royal in Cedarhurst, Long Island, gleefully pointing (of course, I put her up to it) to the dent Mom made in that ersatz right front fender when she misjudged the garage door opening (most unusual - she was a super driver):

I also turned up the color photo of Dad's '41 Saratoga (before the blue turned to maroon) after that infamous snowstorm noted on page 2; this was taken the morning after the storm and the snow had already started melting but you can see the tracks where Dad had to back up and abandon ship after the car, great in snow though it was, simply could not jump up over the bump at the end of our driveway after making a sharp turn on the narrow side street and hurdling the declevity and ramp from the curb to the sidewalk no matter how much or how often he tried (hoo, was he ever chagrined!):

In 1954, my '41 Windsor went for a nearly-new '49 New Yorker (straight) 8 sedan at only $750 (less $250 for the '41). That second '49 New Yorker, the first one I bought, that got clobbered by a '54 Ford on 19 Nov 1955 on Route 40 northbound in Aberdeen, Maryland, took far more of a beating than I remembered and the inebriated gentleman from Georgia who hit me also suffered far less damage to the Ford than I remembered:

1949 NYer Aber 3 1949 NYer Aber 4
(20 Nov 1955 photos by and © 1955, 2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

From that, I went to Jags and then a '50 New Yorker 8 club coupé (still straight - the last one) club coupé (my later used one, not Dad's earlier new one - the one that got coated with asbestos); it was not my favorite car and there aren't many shots of it but this blurred one was shot in South Hempstead in June (note shorts and short sleeves and the cowl vent is open) of 1957:

Then, very briefly, I had a '52 DeSoto which I drove while my '63 V-200 Valiant convertible was lovingly custom-assembled at Chrysler's former Newark, Delaware, tank plant.

MORE CHRYSLER MISCELLANY? I doubt a Chrysler can get more miscellaneous than this U. S. Gypsum twin-Chrysler personnel carrier created for a 20-mile run from mine to plant. More than just a rail critter, this is a Chrysler critter, and Hemi powered, no less!

(from Railroad Work Equipment and Special Service Cars, Robert J. Wayner, NY, ca. 1989)
[Thumbnail image - click on picture for larger image.]

The end facing us, at least, is a '53. That crate must have FLOWN!

Miscellaneous Chrysler Photos

Here's a sleeper; I was looking up RR information on the site of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Rockcliffe (Ottawa area), Ontario, and look what turned up dockside - get a horse! [this photo is the property of the Museum and I have received specific, written permission to reproduce it here (for which I am exceedingly grateful):

(photo property of, and reproduced here by special written permission of,
the Canada Science and Technology Museum - all rights reserved to the Museum.
This image (No. CN001802) may NOT be copied or reproduced without specific, prior, written permission of CSTM.).

Just for laughs, I blew up the portion with the car and the wagon (the same restrictions apply); drool, drool:

On 17 Sep 03, I finally found most of the old pictures that had accumulated and vanished over the past 50 or so years; they are lumped together here and more will be scanned and added. Most have been cropped to save bandwidth but NOT at the expense of the subject (some were shot with an old Voightlander bellows camera that was a beast to frame).

First, in the days when I started driving, pre-war cars were still in everyday use; this 1930 Model 77 roadster, on a 124" wheelbase and with 93HP, was spotted on the street in Troy, New York, in the Spring of 1954:

1930 77 Rdstr Troy 3 1930 77 Rdstr Troy 4
(1954 photos by and © 1954, 2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
{There was also a smaller Model 70; I wouldn't know the difference
but for the "77" on the headlight bar.}

Some, of course, had already been fully restored such as Roy M. Snyder's 77 at the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg meet at Avon, Pennsylvania, on 29 Oct 1955:

1930 77 Rdstr Avon 3 1930 77 Rdstr Avon 4
(29 Oct 1955 photos by and © 1955, 2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

Also sitting by the curb, in Albany, in the Winter of 1955 (probably Jan 55) was this forlorn little 1932 (see the horns, if sans bells) 4-passenger Chrysler 6 convertible 2-door sedan (that's what it was called - not a coupé):

The Sep 1988 trip to Newfoundland and Labrador in the '85 Tourismo had these three notable shots; the car at Gander, hitting 100,000 miles (look carefully at the odometer), and heading into the washout:

85 Tourismo 100K

85 Tiurismo Flood
(Sep 1988 photos by and © 1988, 2003 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

The river is roaring along southward far down to the left (opposite to the direction of the car) and the the flood is roaring along from right to left directly in front of the car; by the time I returned southward, the flood had increased greatly but it was too dark to take a picture!

Another of my favorite cars was not a Chrysler product when made but became one (sort of) when Chrysler bought a 60% interest in the Rootes Group, maker of Hillman and Sunbeam, ca. 1966; that left Chrysler producing the Sunbeam Tiger, a hairy Alpine with a Carroll Shelby 260 cu in Ford V8 engine! This is my '64 Hillman Husky S4 wagon, a cross between a station wagon and a shoe, having a detuned Sunbeam Alpine engine, underbody, and drive train with 15" wheels; that combination made it a lethal weapon against snow - it could, and did, go anywhere, anytime, and was a great fording vehicle, like most Chrysler products (nicknamed Herman Husky - it was NOT a feminine vehicle):

That's my little daughter with her doll carriage and my 63 Valiant V-200 convertible in the background.

The only catch was that the car arrived in the States in 1965 with a crushed gas (petrol) filler pipe and no one realized it until I took delivery with the requisite gallon of gas and went off directly to a gas station to fill 'er up; as luck would have it, there were only attended pumps so I had to let an attendant do the honors. All went swimmingly until I wondered why it was taking so long to fill an 8-gallon tank and saw that the meter read 18 gallons! Screaming at the attendant to shut it off, I looked in the back and saw the entire rear of the car awash with gasoline! Gingerly opening the rear door brought a gusher of gas, most of which was caught in an oil-draining pan and left the spare tire well still flooded. It took an awful lot of very-careful work to drain that and wash the rear compartment and the spare; this is the culprit:

Dodge Power Wagon

As I note on my Ordnance cont. page 1, "Chrysler's Dodge Division made all sorts of vehicles during the WWII (including a very odd amphibian truck, the Cheetah); perhaps their most famous vehicle was their ¾-ton truck, used variously as a personnel carrier, weapons carrier, ambulance, radio truck, and open command car. My personal favorite was always the closed vehicle, like a giant station wagon, which became known after the war in civilian guise as the Dodge Power Wagon 'Carry-All'. I always wanted one, couldn't justify one, and never did get one until, at a Greenberg's Train Show on 23 Mar 2002 in Stony Brook, Long Island, NY, I casually asked a dealer in military models if anyone had ever made a model of that particular body style. His response was, 'You mean like that one?' and there it was in all its glory in (I assume) 1:35 scale; far too much cash changed hands and:

More details about this model (and the dealer) are on the Ordnance cont. page 1.

Joe Cimoch has a fantastic Power Wagon site, working from which I found a bunch of Carryall pictures, miltary and civilian; these are earlier WWII military units (note the sloped hoods):

Power Wagon Carryalls seem to have been very rare or certainly are today. Far rarer are woodies, wooden-bodied Carryalls. Two body builders made them, the Campbell-built line by the Mid State Body Company Inc., of Waterloo, New York, and those made right here on Long Island by J. T. Cantrell & Co of Huntington Station, New York. Joe kindly allowed me to post these two:

These are George Wellman's 1950 Dodge Power Wagon Woodie bodied by Campbell (right) and a Cantrell woodie (left).

[More about Cantrell on my Long Island cont. page 3.]

Per Joe's site (edited), GIs returning home from WWII wanted a truck like the ones they used in the war and Dodge responded by building the Power Wagon, based on the WWII ¾-ton Army vehicle and virtually unchanged from its introduction in 1945 through the 95,145th domestic vehicle in 1968.

I stumbled on David Allen Miller's fabulous story of how he found and lovingly restored WC-53 Carryall; he also has a great set of related VC/WC/M-37/Power Wagon links.

Anent the term "Carryall", Chevy used it as well, and there is a golf-cart type of vehicle by the name, as well as an in-plant transporter vehicle (IH used "Travelall"), so who has the real skinny on Dodge and Carryall?

From France on 09 Nov 2004 came this picture (greatly reduced and artifically lightened) of a 1931 Imperial 8 CD Convertible Coupé in sad need of parts:

What a find! I'll get more information on serial numbers and such.

'33 Chrysler {?} Trunk - I was sent three gigantic images of a trunk supposedly from a 1933 Chrysler touring car; it certainly looked right to me at first but it turned out not to be, so I moved it to Automotive Page 3.

If anyone knows anything more about the particular trunk or Padco, its maker, please let us know.

Cyclops fans; see Cyclops on my Automotive page!

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S. Berliner, III

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of this series of Chrysler pages.

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