Nineties Concept Cars Part 3: Chrysler Phaetons and Thunderbolts

One thing you can do when you give up trying to photograph the vintage Bugattis and Bentleys normally surrounded by swarms of fans "on the lawn" at the Pebble Beach Concours is climb to the upper display area, which has a lawn usually reserved for display of recent concept and show cars by manufacturers and coachbuilders (or did, back when we had coachbuilders). Back in 1997, you could take a break from the comprehensive collection of historic steam cars and micro cars and have a look at this Chrysler Phaeton, parked in front of a preview of Chrysler's upcoming "cab forward" LHX.

Tom Gale was head of Chrysler Styling at this point, having moved over from Engineering.  This position allowed him to popularize two design trends of the 1990s:  the short hood, transverse-engine with front wheel drive Cab Forward look, and Retro Design, which drew inspiration from classic cars of the golden era.  The golden era the designers had in mind was often the 1930s, but any period was fair game.  When the first Mazda Miata appeared for the 1990 model year, it was pretty clear the designers had been thinking about the mid-60s Lotus Elan.  The prow of the Phaeton shows off a grille and teardrop headlight surrounds that could have been sourced in the 1940s.

At the rear, the shape formed into the deck lid harks back to the Twenties and Thirties boat-tail speedsters, as does the dual-cowl layout of the passenger cabin. One car the designers may have had in mind was the 1952 Chrysler Imperial Parade Phaeton shown below. In sheer size the cars are similar, and the Imperial also features the strong horizontal rib formed into the flanks of the car (on the newer Phaeton it's an indent).  The '52 Phaeton was a mixture of then-current features (Imperial grille and bumpers) with fender shapes and full wheel openings predictive of Virgil Exner's 1955 Forward Look...

Three Imperial Parade Phaetons were made on stretched, 147 inch wheelbase chassis. In 1955, the cars were returned to Chrysler for restyling which incorporated most of the forms and details from the 1956 Chrysler line, including prominent tail fins. Among the things on the '56 Chryslers that the Phaetons lacked were side windows, external door handles, and full convertible tops. There was, however, a sort of pup tent for the rear passengers... 

But maybe the 1997 Phaeton show car derived some its swoopy curvaceousness from the Chrysler Newport show cars of 1940 and '41. These were designed by Ralph Roberts  at Chrysler and were built by the revered coachbuilding firm of LeBaron.  Built like the later parade cars on a 147 inch wheelbase, the vast Newports (five were built) were Chrysler's first-ever show cars. Once you get past the dual cowls, a feature then disappearing from production cars, the features you notice call to mind smaller, sportier cars of the 1950s. The way the front fender tops angle down to meet the teardrop rear fender, and the flush sides without running boards predict the Jaguar XK120 of nine years later, though these shapes could also be seen on BMW's Mille Miglia racers of 1940.*

The rear view gives a better sense of the flowing fender lines, and looks forward to the envelope bodies of the 1950s, when fenders were subsumed into the overall body form.  The general lack of applied decoration is striking.  The headlights are hidden behind doors, as they were on Gordon Buehrig's Cord design from 1936.  Here only the doors move, and the lights stay put...

In 1993 Gale's crew at Chrysler unveiled the Thunderbolt show car.  Chrysler was committed to the Cab Forward look at this time, which can be credited, like Gale's less adventurous K-cars from the early 1980s, with saving the company from bankruptcy another time. Along with unadorned, compound-curved  surfaces, the Thunderbolt showcases a long-wheelbase, short-overhangs design, with the large wheel diameters that were then taking hold...

From the overhead rear view, however, the Thunderbolt appears to be trying to do too many things at once.  The vast goggle of the rear window is indented along the centerline, hinting at Zagato's famous "double bubble" competition coupes for no apparent reason. When combined with the wrap-around, visor-like shape of the windshield and side windows, the windows erode the roof form, and prevent a coherent shape from emerging.  It looks as if the design team were told to use up all their ideas in one place, because this would be their last-ever show car.

On the first Thunderbolt, built by LeBaron in 1941 to a design by Alex Tremulis, you encounter a variety of ideas, but they have a more coherent impact. Tremulis had added the external exhaust pipes to the 1937 Cord, and carried the hidden headlight idea into the Thunderbolt, along with a simplified version of the Newport's flush sides, here with the skirted front and rear wheels which had appeared on Joseph Figoni's Talbots and Delahayes a few years earlier... 

The knockout feature, though, was this electrically-operated hardtop which dropped into a huge well forward of the trunk. The Thunderbolt was built on a 127" wheelbase, so it took up a lot of ground for a two-passenger car.  Five were built, each in a different color scheme and with minor trim variations, like the brass trim on the car below.  Looking at the Thunderbolt in this view, it's easy to see that it might have had some influence on postwar Hudsons.  By the early 1950s, LeBaron was out of the coachbuilding business, and the Chrysler design team would delegate the task of crafting their show cars to Ghia. That, however, is a story for another day.

Photo Credits:

Top & 2nd:  the author
3rd:  imcdb.org (the Internet Movie Car Data Base)
4th:  wikimedia
5th:  Chrysler Corporation
6th:  wikimedia (photo by ZInc)
7th thru 9th:  Chrysler Corporation
10th:  the author
11th:  wikimedia 

*Footnotes:  The BMW Mille Miglia car and XK120 roadster are discussed in "Game Changer", our post for July 16, 2017.