1924-1925 Chrysler B70

Hi there, it's me, Dave again, and I'm here to talk about the 1924-25 Chrysler

Now, this was a car that was first built in late 1923

It was first put on sale and shown to the public in January, 1924

So you'd think that it was the 100th anniversary of Chrysler, but Chrysler itself says, you're wrong

So let's talk about the car for a bit, very briefly. It's the model B-70

It's the model B because he had actually designed a Chrysler earlier that was going to be made by Willis in New Jersey and Elizabeth

And that didn't come to fruition for various dull reasons. So it ended up being made by Maxwell

Now it's the model B. 70 because 70 Moss Bar was its top speed

And if you don't know cars of the early 20s, then you won't be at all impressed

But believe me, it was impressive. To get that fast, you really had to have something like a Packard Super 8 at that point

A Dodge Brothers car, you know, the theoretical top speed would be like 35 miles an hour

Good luck getting there. The Graysler it wasn just that they claimed it had a 70 mile per hour top speed It really did You could buy one off the line and see how much faster than 70 And it cost just And of course that means nothing without context It was actually a lot of money at the time

The cheapest cars you could get were about half that price. The B70 came with 68 brake horsepower. That's almost double

the Dodge Brothers car. So now these weren't luxury cars. I mean, you can find them at shows now and then

but on the inside you can see that it was very similar to a mainstream car

It was a little bit above, but not much above. It was a midline car, and it was always meant to be

Now, the one thing is that very few luxury cars could match what it had under the skin

We can start with four-wheel hydraulic brakes. Very rare at the time

Most cars in a low-priced, range or mid-price range had two-wheel mechanical brakes. The ones that had four-wheel

mechanical brakes were a little less common. Four-wheel hydraulic brakes extremely rare

and the braking system on those probably didn last very long or work in all conditions because Chrysler engineers under Carl Breer they took the Lockheed system that was used by other cars such as the cord and perfected it which meant replacing every single part of it

Well, they're in an air filter. Most cars then did not have air filter as hard as it is to believe now

They had a replaceable element oil filter, which worked off of a shunt system. They didn't actually invent it, but they made it work

they had a temperature gauge and that was really a new thing

Most companies would give you a decorative radiator cap and people would replace that with something called a motometer

which put in a thermostat on top of your radiator so that you could see it from the driver's seat

Chrysler actually put a gauge into the dashboard. So the new Chrysler was designed by

mostly by three guys named Zader, Skelton, and Breer. came awfully close to being called the Zader and being produced without Walter Chrysler

but that's a story for another day. They were surprisingly reliable cars despite the high performance

which was really a credit to Zader, Skelton, and Breer. And it was pretty impressive how they tried to protect it

and make it reliable and make it work every day And the body was steel wrapped over wood which was typical of everybody but Dodge Brothers at the time because Dodge Brothers had just worked with Bud

on making the first all-steel body. Now, Carl Breer remembered, and here I've got a quote that I'm going to read

people like them because they could drive as fast as they dared, yet the car would stay right with them

and seem to ask for more. This was something most cars of the time would not do

And that's certainly true. Now, in 1925, they added rubber engine mounts to reduce engine vibration

It was a straight six, so it wasn't that bad to begin with. And they added adjustable front seats, and this made the car even more popular

Chrysler, in fact, grew by leaps and bounds every year. It was really pretty impressive until the Depression

And they ended up buying Dodge Brothers, as most people know. So, again, Chrysler is not celebrating its 100th birthday this year

but they sure could and they'd have something really good to celebrate

Their first car was a doozy. Well, it wasn't a doozy because it didn't cost so much

and a doozy as a Dusenberg, but you get the idea. Anyway, this is Dave signing out

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