One of the first things that catches your eye as you enter the Walter P. Chrysler Museum is a revolving, 75-foot stainless steel pylon atop which is the original Dodge Viper concept and a 1931 Chrysler experimental turbine car.
The pylon in the atrium is the focal point of the new museum, which opened Oct. 1 with an array of historic vehicles and special period displays to offer visitors a look at the story of the old Chrysler Corp. and the evolution of the American automobile industry.
It distills more than 75 years of automotive and U.S. history in its myriad static and interactive displays.
Barry Dressler, an executive for several museums around the U.S. before being recruited by the automaker, says the company set out to build more than another collection of cars. The museum occupies a 55,000-square-foot building on a 10-acre site at DaimlerChrysler’s technical center and headquarters just off Interstate Highway 75, about 30 miles north of downtown Detroit.
“This Walter P. Chrysler Museum is designed to better appreciate the work of those before us, to understand and preserve the achievements of the many generations who will follow us,” says Robert Eaton, DaimlerChrysler chairman.
One of the key exhibits is the “wall of history” that traces the development of the automaker, founded in 1925, through dozens of mergers and acquisitions. Chrysler and American Motors Corp., which Chrysler bought in 1987, absorbed several companies over the years and the automaker’s family tree includes names such as Maxwell, Chalmers, Nash, Hudson, Willys and Kaiser, notes Dressler.
The museum’s goal is to tell the story of the Chrysler and the people who made it, Dressler adds. The displays include a comprehensive look at the company’s advertising and promotional material as well as exhibits about the company workers.
But rather than a big room of cars, the vehicles are showcased in time-specific settings. There’s a suburban tract house of the 1950s with a Chrysler in the driveway and a Jeep with Army soldiers patroling a bombed-out street in Europe in World War II. Another shows what a Chrysler showroom looked like in the 1930s and includes furniture from the company’s pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair.
Visitors can see Walter P. Chrysler’s workshop outfitted with his tools. Chrysler was born in Kansas in 1875. He was trained as a railroad machinist, and, at 33, became the youngest superintendent of locomotives at the Chicago Great Western Railway. Chrysler entered the automotive business in 1910 as head of manufacturing at Buick Motor Car Co. and joined General Motors as first vice president of manufacturing when Buick was absorbed by GM during World War I.
Chrysler left GM to pursue a career turning around ailing manufacturing companies, including the Maxwell Motor Car Co. of Detroit, which he reorganized into the Chrysler Corp. in June 1925. He headed it for 15 years.
Another exhibit shows the role of the K-car in helping the company avoid bankruptcy in the early 1980s. (The K-car chassis could be made longer and shorter to accommodate different models, among them the Dodge Lancer, Chrysler New Yorker, Town & Country station wagon, LeBaron convertible, Dodge Daytona and the first mini-van, as the company found its financial footing.)
But the stars are the vehicles.
Several retirees were brought back as part-time consultants to gather the 140-vehicle collection, half of which will be on display at any time, said Michael Krag, who supervised the hunt and restoration of the old cars for the Chrysler Historical Foundation.
The search for museum-worthy cars required patience and persistence, says Bruce Thomas, one of the retirees who worked on the project, scanning lists of car enthusiasts and ads in car collectors’ magazines and newsletters.
“You use everything you can to find some of these things. Whether it’s ads in different magazines or club rosters or people telling you about someone and they’ve got something else in the garage. We’ve done that, too–called about one and bought something else,” adds Bill Ridenhour, another retiree enlisted to find the vehicles.
The retirees turned up vehicles such as the 1964 Dodge pickup truck with bucket seats and pinstriping that was one of the first light-duty trucks an automaker tried to sell as a substitute for a passenger car, says Thomas.
Other vehicles include one of three 1917 Willys Knights still in existence and a Nash Metropolitan that, according to legend, AMC donated to England’s Royal family, which decided it didn’t want the gift, adds Ridenhour.
“I can’t really see the queen of England driving a left-hand drive car,” says Thomas, who suspects AMC put the vehicle together to tour in auto shows in the 1960s.
Some cars such as a 1929 DeSoto and a 1934 Chrysler Air Flow had been hidden by Chrysler employees who wanted to keep them off the auction block during the company’s financial difficulties.
“At loan-guarantee time, finance people were looking for any way to save a buck or make a buck. I decided out-of-sight-out-of-mind would be a better way to go. So I moved everything to a warehouse in Auburn Hills,” says retiree Otto Rosenbusch, manager of Chrysler’s auto show exhibits in the late 1970s and early ’80s. “They inquired about the collection being valuable, and I told them it was old paper and old used cars of no particular value.”
Though planning for the museum began years before the company merged with Daimler-Benz in 1998, executives of the German industrial giant blessed the project, says Dressler, who notes that Mercedes-Benz operates a museum in Stuttgart.
The company has spent $10 million on the building alone and an undisclosed sum on the cars and exhibits, says Rita McKay, DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman.
MUSEUM PIECES
These are the vehicles on in the collection of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich.
’02 Rambler
’09 Hudson
’15 Dodge
’17 Willys-Knight
’24 Chrysler
’28 Plymouth
’29 DeSoto
’29 Dodge pickup
’30 Hudson
’31 Imperial
’32 Plymouth
’32 Trifon Special
’34 DeSoto Airflow
’34 Dodge pickup
’37 Dodge “humpback” panel truck
’37 Chrysler Airflow
’39 Dodge Hayes-body coupe
’41 Newport
’41 Thunderbolt
’41 Dodge Command Car
’42 DeSoto
’43 Jeep MB
’45 CJ-2A
’48 Chrysler Town & Country convertible
’49 Dodge “pilothouse” pickup
’49 Willys station wagon
’50 Jeepster
’53 Chrysler Special by Ghia
’53 Hudson Hornet
’53 Thomas Special
’53 Nash-Healy
’54 Dodge Power Wagon
’55 Chrysler C-300
’56 Dodge D500
’57 Chrysler 300C
’57 Imperial
’57 Dodge “sweptside” pickup
’60 Valiant
’61 Chrysler 300G
’63 Chrysler Turbine with Ghia body
’64 Dodge 330 Super Stock “Color Me Gone”
’64 Dodge “club cab” pickup
’65 Dodge A/FX altered wheelbase dragster
’69 Dodge Daytona
’69 Plymouth Roadrunner
’70 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda
’70 Plymouth Duster
’70 Dodge Challenger T/A
’70 Chrysler Hurst
’73 Jeep CJ5
’75 Chrysler Cordoba
’78 Dodge Li’l Red Express pickup
’78 Plymouth Horizon
’78 Dodge Rod Hail Baja pickup
’81 Plymouth Reliant
’84 Plymouth Voyager mini-van
’86 Chrysler Town & Country van
’87 Chrysler LeBaron Indy pace car
’87 Lamborghini Portofino concept
’89 Dodge Viper concept car
’90 Salt Flats Speed Car
’92 Chrysler LeBaron Bonneville car
’93 Dodge Intrepid
’93 Chrysler Atlantic
’91 NASCAR Truck
’93 Jeep Grand Cherokee
’96 Viper race prototype
’98 Viper LeMans Class winner
’98 Stratus Touring Class winner
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The Walter P. Chrysler Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday thr ough Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $6 for adults; $3 for seniors and children 6 through 12; and free for kids 5 and younger. 888-456-1924 or www.chryslerheritage.com.
