Visionary Chrysler demanded precision

In 1936, cars touched more American lives than telephones or electricity.

Throughout the vast country there were 17.2 million phones and 21.1 million homes wired for electric service.

But there were already 26 million cars on the road.

Chrysler was beginning its 11th year of business that year.

Walter P Chrysler had left General Motors as a successful and wealthy executive.

Then, he was hired by bankers to “fix” Maxwell as he had done at Willys-Overland.

He started building a car named after him in the old Maxwell plant, relying on his “3 Musketeers” — Fred Zeder, Owen Skelton and Carl Breer — for a superior product.

The Chrysler Model 70 crashed the market for a $1500 car and gave Ford and GM an able competitor.

By the 1930s, Chrysler had added Plymouth, Dodge and De Soto to his stable, along with Dodge Truck, Chrysler Marine, air compressors and even air conditioning units.

A large percentage of the 26 million cars on the road in 1936 were Chrysler products that were known for their engineering excellence.

Chrysler’s centralised engineering department worked out of a modern office building that included drafting rooms, offices, and research and testing laboratories.

The Chrysler Engineering Division also had a resident chief engineer and engineering staff at each of its manufacturing plants.

Achievements of Chrysler engineers included aluminum pistons, all-steel car bodies, Airflow designs, hydraulic four-wheel brakes, the ‘Floating Power’ engine mounting system and advances in car weight distribution.

The engineering building included hot and cold rooms, an electrical testing laboratory, a carburettor development area, chemistry and physics laboratories, a rubber laboratory and a radiator laboratory.

The old Maxwell engineering building included an air conditioning research laboratory and the Chrysler Institute of Engineering for teaching future engineers enrolled in a two-year course of study.

Students there went to school half a day and worked in a Chrysler department for half a day.

Chrysler stressed precision workmanship in all of its products from a $510 Plymouth coupe to a $1500 Chrysler Imperial Airflow.

One out of every 100 parts on a Chrysler assembly line were pulled off and tested.

The goal was to build a mass-produced automobile that was as perfect as possible.

In the company’s East Jefferson Avenue and Kercheval plants, a teletype installation controlled the entire production process and allowed management to map out the complete production system and track each step in the process.

Six sending stations were set up throughout each factory and a seventh station in the billing department tracked the finances involved.

The machine was also connected to Canadian customs to clear shipments in advance and save trucking time.

Vehicle manufacture was a complicated process that involved ordering parts from 1400 outside suppliers and outsourced parts were routinely tested.

With its four lines of passenger cars offering 61 body types.

Fusing metal to metal with electricity allowed Chrysler’s workers to add strength and beauty to cars while making them at a lower cost.

The company studied industrial processes and developed hydromatic welding systems that used oil pressure to control the upper electrodes of giant spot-welding machines that could make multiple welds in a single operation.

Welders also used Martin guns to do auxiliary operations while the major parts were being welded in the large machines.

Tough steels were made tougher in Chrysler’s heat treating department.

After being heated in Hagan rotary electric furnaces, parts such as transmission gears were dipped into hot cyanide and quenched in the air.

Engine connecting rods were processed in pairs before assembly and diamond-bored afterwards in a broaching operation.

The rods and caps were precision checked by an electric gauge.

The amount of parts flowing through a factory was unbelievable.

Chrysler’s plant in Newcastle, Indiana, which made steering gears and tube axles for Dodges and Plymouths, turned out about 40 million kilos of work in 1935.

More than five million aluminum pistons were made between late 1933 and 1936. That translated into 1800 pistons per day.

Engine and transmission assemblies had to be put together and checked at the factories.

Nearly 30km of conveyors and the world’s longest 1936 assembly line were installed in Plymouth’s Detroit factory.

New Outlander on the way

Drag chain conveyors carried the recently painted car bodies through drying ovens in which the temperature was controlled within two degrees.

The painted parts then moved towards a synchronized process that sorted out nearly 5 million possible combinations of colours, trim options and body styles.

There were 72 possible engine combinations.

At the Jefferson Avenue plant — where Chrysler and De Soto passenger cars were built in Airstream and Airflow styles — finished bodies were lowered from a mezzanine to the chassis assembly line on the first floor.

In another operation, a circular roller conveyor system carried parts to the workers who built up sub-assemblies from De Soto grilles, radiators and shrouding.

After mounting of the proper size and style tyres, painted wheels in any of 10 colours were discharged from the bottom of a chute and delivered to the proper car on the assembly line.

Chrysler’s traffic department used track sheets to make sure that the correct parts got to the assembly line at just the right time.

Using code, the track sheets gave the specifications of every of the up to 600 cars built each day.

As well, the factory did not have enough space inside for the storage of the 750,000 parts handled each hour or for the hundreds of car bodies built up in a typical day.

To ensure proper synchronization, bodies had to be ordered five days in advance, while orders for mudguards and bonnets could be processed in 24 hours.

Plant maintenance was also a critical consideration and the plant engineer’s job was to provide an uninterrupted supply of light, heat and other vital services.

Crating and shipping were other important functions that car factories dealt with.

Clearly, there was nothing simple about a Chrysler product in 1936 – a time when cars outnumbered telephones.

Then, 10 years later, in June, 1946, the first wireless phone call from a car was made.

Yes, from a Chrysler.