Technically, Chrysler has two anniversaries. The general public got its first look at the original Chrysler car on January 5, 1924, but the company that was Chrysler Corporation, now Stellantis after a century of highs, lows, and mergers, celebrates its centennial on June 6, 2025. That’s because it took almost a year and a half after the Chrysler B-70’s blockbuster debut for the company’s modern corporate structure to be born from the remains of a couple of older makes: Maxwell and Chalmers.
That big January debut took place in New York City’s Commodore Hotel, right next door to Grand Central Station. Chrysler’s early history is deeply intertwined with the New York show, which itself turned 125 this year, and to celebrate both of these anniversaries, Chryler brought along one of the very oldest cars in its collection to this year’s New York Auto Show: the black, early-production Chrysler B-70 Six tourer you see above. If ever there were a time to look back at the B-70 and the early days of Chrysler, it’s now.
A hit from the moment it was introduced, by the end of 1924, more than 32,000 Chrysler Sixes had been sold. Though Walter P. was already famous from his time at GM, the car established the Chrysler name as a market success, paving the way for everything that came later. But ironically, while Walter P. Chrysler’s reputation as an auto executive and the qualities of the car were undeniable, the new brand got a helpful spotlight courtesy of a strategic blunder on the part of the show.
In the 1920s, the New York Auto Show was still the most important in the country, and it happened much earlier than it does today. Executives from automakers and suppliers, and media, from all over the country (back then, there were still major automakers in places like St. Louis and Buffalo) streamed into the city by train, often staying near Grand Central Terminal (terminus of the New York Central Railroad) or the original Penn Station.
Historically, the Auto Show (first held in 1900) had been held at the old circa-1890 Madison Square Garden or the Grand Central Palace, just north of Grand Central Terminal in the heart of midtown. However, in January of 1924, the Palace was unexpectedly booked for a boat show. So the organizers of the Auto Show moved it to the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. The Armory (which still exists today) was a big and very pretty venue, but it was also a 45-minute subway ride from midtown Manhattan and practically on the Moon if you were coming from Brooklyn.
As the Chrysler Six was a new car from a new make, the organizers initially seemed reluctant to allow its display at the show. As famed Chrysler engineer (and “Musketeer”) Carl Breer later chronicled, the show wouldn’t allow a car that hadn’t already been in production for at least a few months to be shown.
Accounts differ on what happened next, but a compromise seems to have been reached in which an “overflow display” was created, partially at Chrysler’s expense, at the Commodore Hotel (named for Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the New York Central and a huge shipping empire). The hotel still exists today, but was stripped of its classical decoration and identity in a 1980s “update” that turned it into an anonymous glass box.
According to Breer, it was the then-new sales manager for the company, Joe Fields, who conceived the plan and contracted the space at the Commodore for a “private” show of their own. Chrysler soon had company there, possibly to help offset the cost. The Weymann Fabric Body company, then hugely successful in Europe and seeing its wares adorn cars from Fiats to Bentleys, also displayed there, as did another new make, the Rollin. Both the Chrysler and the Rollin were advanced cars for their day, but the latter lasted only two years.
Since the distant Bronx Armory was closed on Sundays, and January 5th was a Saturday, the Chryslers were front and center for both the public and the industry that weekend. It was a real triumph for Walter Chrysler, and the car that had been years in the making got an astounding amount of attention.
Walter Chrysler was already famous by 1920, having been Buick’s production chief under Charlie Nash and later its general manager. In 1916, GM founder Billy Durant had returned to the corporation and wrested control from Nash, who left to form his eponymous firm. Chrysler was dismayed, but Durant paid him a huge sum to stay and keep Buick profitable. Chrysler agreed to stay for three years, but when the contract was up, he’d had enough of the freewheeling Durant’s undisciplined behavior.
At the invitation of Willys’ creditors (founder John North Willys himself was less enthusiastic), Chrysler joined that company in early 1920, immediately helping to reduce its mounting debts and manufacturing disorganization. His name was already well-known, and Willys hoped to capitalize on it by launching a new “Chrysler Six” in late 1920, to be built at an ex-Duesenberg plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which Willys had bought in 1919.
To engineer this new car, Chrysler wooed the famous “Three Musketeers” of engineering, Breer, Fred Zeder, and Owen Skelton away from where they were working at the time: Studebaker. All three were well-established engineers who worked on gas- and steam-powered cars from Allis-Chalmers, Studebaker, Packard, Pope-Toledo, and other brands. All brilliant engineers, Breer was the oldest and the ringleader.
It’s hard to picture it now, but in the era of early cars, and even into the early 1920s, the automotive industry was evolving so rapidly that a high-flying career of even seven or eight years made you a veteran. Then, as now, however, the world of auto executives and engineers was tight-knit.
The Musketeers were well known to Chrysler, and he reached out to them through Breer’s tailor, O.G. Brown, who was a popular clothier among auto execs in Detroit. The trio was unhappy with Studebaker management, so Chrysler’s invitation to Willys seemed like a good idea. They poached a dozen other engineers and all moved to New Jersey, making the Elizabeth plant their base of operations.
This factory, built for Duesenberg in 1916 but only used for aero-engine work during WWI, came with a capable engineering staff of its own, including future Chrysler lead testing engineer Allen “Tobe” Couture and an Italian engineer, M. Sergardi, who would later help engineer the REO Royale.
Couture felt that the original “Six,” a stretched version of Willys’ four-cylinder mainstay, was garbage, and let it be known. Chrysler and the Musketeers agreed, so they began designing a new car that summer, which was in testing by early 1921. Chrysler, meanwhile, began recruiting Buick and Cadillac dealers to possibly sell the car and establish the Chrysler make, possibly by buying the whole factory and selling the car himself. This plan was soon blocked by Willys’ Chairman J.R. Harbeck, and Chrysler was forced out.
Despite Walter P.’s help, Willys’ debts mounted, and in the spring of 1922, major cuts were required. The company put the Elizabeth factory and the new design up for auction. Chrysler turned up to bid, but found himself outspent by … Billy Durant. By then, Durant had been ousted for the second and final time at GM and was working on a new empire. The Six that the engineers had been working on became the Flint Six, and the Musketeers and many of their minions (including Couture) left to form an independent consultancy in nearby Newark.
Durant’s engineers didn’t necessarily understand all of the features of the Chrysler prototype, so he tried to woo Couture and the Musketeers into refining it for him, even taking Zeder to one of the Yankees-Giants World Series games that fall. Zeder agreed to tune the engine for Durant, which gave him access to the Dynamometer room at Elizabeth, where he and the team worked on the Flint engine, but also a new inline six, which they shopped to Chrysler.
Meanwhile, the same bankers who’d brought on Walter P. to Willys had him take over the much more seriously ailing Maxwell concern in 1921. Maxwell was in the process of merging with Chalmers, which was in even more trouble, and Chrysler eventually decided to phase out Chalmers in 1923. The Maxwell would continue, joined for 1924 by an improved version of the “Chrysler Six” that the Musketeers had been working on, building on ideas they’d had which had not been used for the Flint, along with some new ones.
Light, strong, and possessed of four-wheel hydraulic brakes (Breer himself met with Malcolm Lockheed to explore how they worked), the early Chrysler Six was fast, reliable, and attractive. It even ran at Le Mans, though that’s a story for another day. The car’s engineering was finished in a hurry at the former Chalmers facilities so that production could begin in 1924, and after some excited press releases in December 1923, the car landed like a bolt of lightning at the Commodore Hotel.
The open-topped car Chrysler brought to NYIAS this year is one of the earliest prototype B-70s, according to Stellantis, and was used in pre-production testing. Although enclosed cars would shortly overtake tourers, and closed versions were on display at the Commodore, in 1924 most cars were still open four-door tourers.
Fashions moved fast in the 1920s, and by 1926, the car had been updated into the G-70, which was very close to the original except for a light visual update by body engineer Oliver Clark. Chrysler did not have “stylists” or “brand planners” at that time, but the car had very pleasing lines for something created by a body engineer. Walter P., an engineer himself, put the Musketeers firmly in charge of product development, and the company was a distinctly engineering-first, style-second company in the early years.
Why, then, is the 100th anniversary being celebrated in 2025? Well, technically, the company that built the 1924 Chryslers was still Maxwell-Chalmers. The process of turning these companies around and getting the Chrysler car into production was so rapid that all parties involved simply cranked out the design, the marketing, and the car as fast as it could happen.
In 1924 and 1925, the company was still selling Maxwells, with an updated four-cylinder engine designed by the Musketeers. As nice as it was, the “Good Maxwell” as Breer called it, was a thing of the past. That summer, it was phased out, and the plans for its replacement were put on hold until 1927, when Plymouth would debut to take its place. On June 6, 1925, Chrysler Corporation was formally organized out of what remained from Maxwell-Chalmers.
In 1925, Chrysler was at the Armory, but again staged a lavish display at the Commodore and was joined there by several more makes, including Auburn and Sterling-Knight in addition to a repeat appearance from the Weymann company. In 1926, the New York show organizers wisely returned to Manhattan’s Grand Central Palace, just a block north of the Commodore. They never went back to the Armory, which makes me a little sad since I’m a Bronx native, but it was clearly the right call.
By then, Chrysler was rapidly ascending to the top of the automotive world. Plymouth and DeSoto were soon to bow, and in 1928, the Corporation bought the Dodge Brothers concern from a consortium of bankers who had acquired it after the deaths of the founders. In 1930, the Chrysler Building opened just across Lexington Avenue from the Commodore hotel, and it’s still a monument to Walter P.’s early success.
Happy Anniversary, Chrysler!
Hope they can save the make! Product, product, product. Sounds like following the template of the original may be a good idea.
I hope Chrysler can bring back some exciting cars. The 300 was the last thing interesting and it lived too long in it’s most current form.