Walter P. Chrysler Museum

The 1934 Chrysler Airflow

One of only six LeBaron Newports

A Challenger T/A at a local drive-in

Dave Strickler’s altered-wheelbased Dodge

Dodge Sweepside pick-up truck

Few cars evoke the feelings of the musclecar as much as the purpose-built 440-6 BBL Road Runners and Six Pack Super Bees from the mid-1969 model run. These A12-coded models remain the most purpose-built street-strip cars of the ’60s era.

Here is the mini-race track in the Boss Chrysler’s Garage, full of vehicles from the ’50s to the ’90s. Until April 2001, this area was full of race machinery from Chrysler’s history.

For the big-fin brigade, the basement also hosts this Plymouth Fury, a 1957 exercise in Virgil Exner’s styling influences. The turnpikes never had it so good...

Born for the NASCAR wars and debuting at the first race at Talledega in 1969, the street versions of the Dodge Daytona came in only two speeds—fast and faster. This 440 Magnum-powered edition is from Texas.

The museum doesn’t only display as-built production cars. This 1992 Chrysler LeBaron coupe set land-speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Modified competition.

If the Fury was too mundane for your tastes, 1957 also offered the 300C, a Chrysler legend that packed 392 inches of early Hemi power under the bonnet. Passes everything but the gas station.

The Hemi went by the wayside and was replaced by the long-ram 413 wedge motor. This red 300G is a classic example of the breed. In the background is a 300-H built by Hurst in 1970.

According to legend, the testing of the 426 Hemi on dynos in Highland Park roared through the city streets. This is an original dyno, Cell 13, from the plant, complete with a NASCAR-breed Hemi mounted to the inertia wheel.

If you like trucks, the museum has a place for you.

The truck section includes competition models, such as this Class 4 four-wheel drive desert Dodge.

There is a great selection of utility vehicles in the garage, ranging from prewar classics through the ’80s, plus a solid display of Jeeps and military units. Upstairs is a monstrous Dodge Power Wagon, a bombed-out street scene from World War II, and a motor from a Sherman tank that was recently found in Argentina.

Strickler’s 1965 altered-wheelbase car is on loan from collector Steve Atwell, who spent years restoring it to what it is in today. Fuel injected, it is one of the 11 built for the factory program that year at Amblewagon, a Detroit-area subcontractor, giving birth to the “Funny Car” name.

Of course, no collection would be complete without a Hemi ’Cuda, and this pristine 1970 model features the Shaker hood treatment and hockey-stick stripes to boot.

The earliest models in the collection are on display on the first floor. This quadrant features the 1909 Hudson, 1902 Rambler (shown), a 1915 Dodge Brothers, and a 1932 Desoto.

Walter P. Chrysler was a fascinating man. This is a realistic diorama of an early machine shop that features Chrysler’s original tools and a plaster rendition of W.P. at work.

The car that started an empire. The 1924 Chrysler B-70 Phaeton would be the start of Chrysler’s legacy after several decades in the railroad and auto-manufacturing business. From its success would come many innovations to the world of car building.

As the Depression wound down, styling became more crucial. Here is a 1939 Dodge Hayes coupe, reflecting the styling from the late prewar era.

Displays located throughout the museum’s three floors highlight Chrysler’s technical innovations. This one shows the development and construction of the PowerFlite transmission, the predecessor of the Torqueflite.

Chrysler Corporation’s products played a big role in winning the Second World War, and the extent may never be fully appreciated. While Willys Jeeps were perhaps the most visible vehicles of the 1941-’45 era, Chrysler built hundreds of military transports, Flying Fortress bomber engines, and played a vital hardware role in the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bomb.

The immediate postwar era brought about cars like this classic Chrysler Town & Country convertible, complete with the wood treatment. This is a 1948 model.

The Ghia custom that took the auto-show world by storm, this 1953 Chrysler Thomas Special is at the top of the landing coming up to the final floor of the collection. With only six built, it was one of the toughest vehicles for the museum to find.

Two years later, the first Chrysler 300 was introduced, and this version is displayed with the “Million Dollar Look” billboard in the background.

Dodge’s Custom Royal Lancer may well have found its habitat in suburbia, the postwar ideal for living. The museum did a masterful job in replicating this facade of the ’50s “atomic family.” Is there a bomb shelter out back?

For the well-off, there was the spectacular 1957 Chrysler Imperial Southampton. With chrome galore and bullet taillights, this was the highway star that could be summed up with the two words: “wretched excess.” A Mopar classic from the Exner era.

The end of the supercar era brought about cars like the Cordoba. This 1976 edition was built for the show-car circuit.

the globe, there are tributes to man’s love affair with the automobile. The Petersen Museum in Los Angeles, the Indianapolis 500 Museum in Indianapolis, Henry Ford’s iconoclastic Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, and many others around the world are all basically dedicated to the internal-combustion engine and its various cultural effects on people. Each of these facilities offers its own individual view of how the “horseless carriage” has impacted us.

While each of these may have a representative piece of Mopar history or two on display, until recently there was no collection open to the public dedicated solely to the products of the Chrysler Corporation and its affiliates. That all changed with the unveiling of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in October 1999. In Chrysler’s always-trendsetting style, the granite-faced structure with 55,000-square-feet of display space was the first on-site museum built by a North American manufacturer, located on a prominent 10-acre corner of the sprawling DaimlerChrysler Technical Center, a half-hour drive north of Detroit.

The museum has an interesting background. The two leading people in its impetus were former president Bob Lutz and Barbara Fronczak, who is in charge of the Chrysler Historical Archives in Highland Park, Michigan. During the previous 70 years, Chrysler had built up a collection of prototypes and production cars, which were in storage. Otto Rosenbusch, who was in Special Events PR, deserves credit for saving many of the most important cars during the lean years of the late 1970s and early 1980s. As the company looked for any way to liquidate assets to stem off its financial problems, he began to spirit away some of the cars, including the 1924 Chrysler prototype and a DeSoto Airflow that had been owned by Airflow designer Carl Breer, to offsite locations where they would be harder to find. Once the plan was made to establish the facility, these cars formed the initial collection.

Once it became obvious that the collection would finally be put on display, the project focused on making it more than simply an accumulation of hardware. The plan was to present the cars in context to their importance. There would be a special area dedicated to Walter P. Chrysler’s earliest years, complete with life-sized plaster figures of major players that loom over Chrysler’s personal tools and desks. Interactive and interpretive displays would highlight special design features that were developed by Chrysler’s engineering and styling staffs. On each level of the three-story building, certain significant machines would be placed in full-size dioramas; a war-torn street in World War II, a ’60s-era drive-in restaurant, and a ’50s-era suburb all play supporting roles to the cars. In total, 60 cars could fit into the designed space.

The first floor is dedicated primarily to the prewar and immediate postwar era with the earliest Chryslers. There are also older machines from companies the Chrysler Corporation controlled later. Chrysler Airflow has its own corner, and an enormous aircraft engine from World War II shows the engineering and design quality that later helped make the first-generation Hemi a success. Offices and the museum’s well-stocked gift shop are also on this level.

A spiral staircase leading to the second floor wraps around an immense pylon supporting three significant cars—a 1941 Thunderbolt concept car, one of the surviving 1963 Turbines, and the original Viper prototype. The high-finned Imperials, the Chrysler 300s, and other vehicles from 1950s are upstairs. A Challenger T/A, the sole supercar-era example on this floor, is in one corner at the aforementioned drive-in. The displays also include versions of the ubiquitous K-car, which kept the company alive in the 1980s; the minivan, which Chrysler used to create a whole new genre of automobiles; and a Lamborghini Portofino concept designed by Chrysler’s Pacifica Studio that inspired cab-forward design from that short-lived partnership in the mid-1990s. The second floor also features a 125-seat movie theatre that loops short films on subjects such as the early life of W.P. Chrysler, the 502-acre Tech Center next door, and the musclecar era.

Ah, yes, the musclecars. You see, the vehicles upstairs are difficult to move around, so the best stuff is in the cavernous basement for easy access. Called the “Boss Chrysler’s Garage,” most readers of this magazine will want to save this for last, because once you get down there, you’ll want to spend some quality time examining everything. Dave Strickler’s altered-wheelbase car (on loan from Steve Atwell) is on display, as are a group of muscle-bound machines strung around an abbreviated race course. A line of trucks, ranging from early Dodge Brothers models to Rod Hall’s Walker Evans’ off-road champion, are down here too, and a string of Jeeps and AMC models line another wall. Some cars rotate in and out of displays in the aisleway (the museum actually owns about 150 cars). In late 2000, in honor of Mopar’s return to NASCAR, the Garage was filled with authentic race cars that are either part of the museum’s additional holdings or are on loan from private collections through this April.

The DaimlerChrysler Technical Center is a groundbreaking facility in the automotive business, housing nearly a complete “city” of 12,000 employees under one roof. Likewise, the Walter P. Chrysler Museum is a first-ever tribute to the people and the machines that made the Chrysler Corporation one of the largest automobile builders on earth. It’s well worth a trip to Michigan to it see first-hand; these photographs give a good idea of what is on display.

Walter P. Chrysler Museum
Hours: 10:00 a.m.— 6:00 p.m. Tues.— Sat.
Noon – 6:00 p.m. Sunday
Closed Monday and select holidays.
Phone: 888-456-1924
Web site: chryslerheritage.com