1、The Birth of Chrysler Corporation and Its Engineering Legacy Carl BreerThe Birth of Chrysler Corporation and Its Engineering Legacy Carl Breer Edited by Anthony J. Yanik Prepared under the auspices of the SAE Historical Committee. Published by: Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. 400 Commonwealth
2、Drive Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Phone: (412) 776-4841 Fax: (412) 776-5760 Copyright 1995 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. eISBN: 978-0-7680-4605-2Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Breer, Carl, 1883 The birth of Chrysler Corporation and its engineering legacy / Carl Breer
3、 ; edited by Anthony J. Yanik. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-56091-524-2 1. Automobiles-United States-Design and construc- tion-History. 2. Chrysler Corporation-History. 3. Breer, Carl, 1883. 4. Zeder, Fred, 1886. 5. Skelton, Owen, 1886. 6. Automobile engineers-United States. I. Yanik, Anthony J. II
4、. Title. TL23.B63 1994 338.76292220973-dc20 94-43487 CIP Copyright 1995 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc. ISBN 1-56091-524-2 All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Second printing. Permission to photocopy for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of spe
5、cific clients, is granted by SAE for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), provided that the base fee of $.50 per page is paid directly to CCC, 222 Rosewood Dr., Danvers, MA 01923. Special requests should be addressed to the SAE Publications Group. 1-56091-5
6、24-2/95 $.50 SAE Order No. R-144Carl Breer: 1883-1970Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii Prologue. ix Introduction xi Carl Breer 1 Fred Zeder .5 Owen Skelton 7 Part I: Carl Breer: The Early Years 9 Part II: With Zeder and Skelton at Studebaker, 1916-1918 31 Part III: We Create Chrysler Corporatio
7、n 65 Part IV: Reminiscences of Early Product Developments at Chrysler Corporation 91 Part V: Birth of the Airflow Car 143 Part VI: Railroad Ride Research Along Airflow Principles 177 Part VII: The Chrysler Engineering Team and the War Effort 187 Part VIII: Death of Walter Chrysler and a New Regime 1
8、97 Conclusion 199 Epilogue. 203 Index 213Acknowledgements This book exists primarily because Dr. James Flink brought the existence of Carl Breers manuscript to the attention of James Wren, then head of the Society of Automotive Engineers Historical Committee. Mr. Wren contacted William Zeder Breer,
9、son of Mr. Breer, Sr., with the ultimate result that SAE purchased the manu- script which I agreed to edit for publication. I am indebted to Mr. Wren for his support through the several iterations of this editing task, and especially to Mr. William Zeder Breer for his assistance in mak- ing certain
10、that any changes I made accurately reflected his fathers thoughts. Mr. Breer also was kind enough to make the photographs available from his fathers many scrapbooks for copy in this book, a number of which have not appeared before in other historical publications. Thanks also to Karen Prymak of the
11、American Automobile Manufacturers Asso- ciation who made sense out of my numerous penciled changes, sentence and page shifts to type out drafts that finally resulted in the text that makes up this book. Anthony J. YanikPrologue This is the story of a remarkable engineering team as told by one of its
12、 members, Carl Breer. He together with Fred Zeder and Owen Skelton brought solid engi- neering principles to the design and testing of early automobiles at a time when such principles were still in the formative stage. Beginning with a look back at Carl Breers early years, the books focus then shift
13、s to the Zeder, Skelton, and Breer engineering team. Through the eyes of Carl Breer we are given a glimpse of the trio as they provide Studebaker with a solid engineering base prior to World War I and, more importantly, become the building blocks upon which the present Chrysler Corporation was found
14、ed. Mr. Breer then takes us on a tour of the multitudinous innovations for which the trio were responsible during the early days of Chrysler, capped by a behind-the-scenes description of the companys most well-known make the Airflow an engi- neering tour de force but marketing failure. Unknown to mo
15、st are the numerous applications of Airflow principles to other Chrysler products, including the search for a better riding railroad train. Finally, Mr. Breer revisits the various efforts that Chrysler pursued for the U. S. government during World War II. While Mr. Breer did not date his manuscript,
16、 it appears that he wrote it over an extended period of time, completing it in 1960. I have attempted to adhere to his original words as closely as possible, if not in words then at least in thought in places where his original language became ob- scure over time. It is only appropriate that brief b
17、iographies of the three principles involved Carl Breer, Fred Zeder, and Owen Skelton be included to flesh out those years prior to World War I before they came together to form one of the most produc- tive engineering teams in automotive history. The biographies are provided by Mr. Breer himself. An
18、thony J. YanikIntroduction This is the history of three engineers who joined together to form a business association during the early days of the automobile, an engineering team that was able to hold together for 35 years of productive effort. The team: myself (Carl Breer), Fred M. Zeder, and Owen S
19、kelton. Looking back, we three helped lead the way in popularizing many basic new innovations that have helped prepare the solid foundation on which our great American automotive free enterprise system has been built. Our primary goal was to recognize and strengthen each weak link that we could unco
20、ver in the automobile chain of mechanically related things, cure them, and make them more efficient yet free from human tampering. The end result, the modern automobile of today, is one that is more dependable and safer than the people who drive them. It was indeed a fortunate occasion when that opp
21、ortunity opened up in 1916 at Studebaker for the three of us to come together, recognize how each of our strengths helped to complement each other as an automotive engineering team, and have the perseverance to become a vital factor in the development of the product. Later, it became the lab of our
22、engineering team to forge the engineering founda- tion that made it possible for Walter Chrysler to found the present Chrysler Cor- poration which provided a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of people along with countless others associated with supplying industries. Most of the automobile innova
23、tions we initiated and commercialized have been accepted as standard equipment on all makes of automobiles today, such as hy- draulic brakes, floating power, downdraft carburetors, air cleaners, oil filters, curved windshields, and many others the evolution and development of which are recorded in t
24、he following chapters. Readers who have lived during our time can appreciate the phenomenal, rapid change in our living environment during the period of transition from the horse and buggy and dirt road to the modern motor car and highway. Physical work hasxii been greatly reduced by mechanization,
25、both in the plant as well as in the home. Heat now is delivered to the user automatically. During my youth, for example, all work was accomplished by hand, or foot. To illustrate, at the turn of the century I built myself a complete steam car using Barnes foot-operated lathe and hand tools. We have
26、come a long way since then as the following pages will indicate, most surprisingly within one mans lifetime mine. When I was growing up, we got from here to there by harnessing a horse to a vehicle, using reins to steer and a whip to accelerate if hoping to make time to reach ones destination on sch
27、edule. On long trips it was necessary to carry feed for fuel, and to take time out for both man and horse to rest after jouncing up and down over the rough roads of the day. The sense of freedom that came from ones first ride in a horseless carriage, going faster (and bouncing higher over those same
28、 roads), and buying fuel from grocery stores in five gallon tin cans was a new thrill. The physical strain in the horseless carriage was much higher over those rough roads, but the exhilaration of being your own master was well worth it in spite of the fact that a horse and buggy gave one a more com
29、fortable ride. Also in those days came the interest as well as the need to become inter- ested in learning about the mechanical things under the hood. Service stations were few, the best solution being to dig out the instruction book. Soon you be- come your own mechanic, a far cry from grooming and
30、hitching a horse. Gradually, as cars became more tinker-proof, we lost interest in doing our own maintenance work, coming to the conclusion that automobiles were becoming pretty reliable products. Now we began to look for features adapted to more personal comfort, or gave a car a more distinctive ap
31、pearance, namely its styling. Appearance, however, was not much of an overloading factor when Fred Zeder, Owen Skelton, and I began our association in 1916 at Studebaker. Durability and reliability were the challenge with which we were initially faced. Fred Zeders association with the automobile ind
32、ustry came before Skeltons and mine. He could recall the days when many auto suppliers entertained lavishly, and how many a contract was settled over the old Pontchartrain bar. The Pontchartrain Hotel has long since disappeared. In later years, the auto suppliers adopted the habit of lavishing Chris
33、tmas presents on us until they reached the point that corporations had to issue orders for vendors to cease.xiii Our engineering trio discouraged this sort of outside influence and made our feelings clear to our employees, especially the new young engineers coming in. All of our development work had
34、 to be based on sound engineering principles. Actually natures fundamental laws are all related and none are contrary or con- flict with one another. Man himself may be contrary or arbitrary at times, but Natures laws have no choice. Theres only one answer and thats the right an- swer. Men that were
35、 not honest in their profession did not last long in our orga- nization. Natures laws are many and often difficult to interpret, but as we ex- plored and discovered them, so with respect to them did we build our products. In looking back, I can see that the three of us were fortunate to come from th
36、ree entirely different backgrounds during an important, evolutionary era of the motor vehicle industry. Although this book is primarily about our 35-year association, I feel it necessary to relate my own early years in order to give you some insight into how automobile engineers came to be in those
37、pioneering days when such an engineering curriculum scarcely existed on college campuses. The four horsemen who created Chrysler Corporation: (top) Owen Skelton and Carl Breer; (bottom) Walter Chrysler and Fred Zeder. (Breer Collection)Carl Breer Carl Breer was born in Los Angeles, California, Novem
38、ber 8, 1883. He acquired craftsmanship experience in his fathers blacksmith shop and at an early age de- signed and built his own steam car. With the ultimate goal of enrolling in Stanford University, he drove the steam car to Pasadena, and demonstrated it to the Stanford- accredited Throop Polytech
39、nic Institute. (Throop later became the highly-re- garded California Institute of Technology.) Throop accepted him for a one-year term (1904), and graduated him with full credit requirements that enabled him to enter Stanford University. Building and demonstrating his steam car to members of the Tou
40、rist Automobile Company (the only west coast manufacturer of automobiles) brought him his first job, one of several automotive positions involved in demonstrating and ser- vicing such eastern makes as Toledo Steam Cars, The Spalding, The Northern, and The White Steamer. He also was to become associa
41、ted in the design and building of the Duro Car Company in Los Angeles, manufacturers of a two-cyl- inder opposed engine and transmission set forward with a cardinal shaft (propel- ler shaft) drive to the rear axle. After graduating as a Mechanical Engineer from Stanford in 1909, Breer received an in
42、vitation to join Allis-Chalmers. The Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Com- pany, located at West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, had initiated an attractive two-year apprenticeship course selecting mechanical engineering graduates from many top universities. Some twenty-five were chosen. Breer was one, as
43、 was Fred Zeder, a graduate from the University of Michigan. It was at the Allis- Chalmers Company at West Allis where Fred Zeder and he became close friends. In 1911 Breer returned to the west coast to become superintendent of the Moreland Motor Truck Company building factory. Still on the move, he
44、 went into the service and accessory business, organizing the Home Electric Auto Works in 1914. He soon became disenchanted with this effort and sold out to his partner. In 1916, just as Breer had completed a combination experimental garage and shop, a letter arrived from Fred Zeder asking him to jo
45、in Studebaker (of which he had become chief engineer) to set up and organize a research division.2 Breer as he completed his apprenticeship at Allis-Chalmers in 1911 and prepared to return to California. (Breer Collection)3 Carl Breer (bottom left) and Fred Zeder (top left) pose with their fellow ap
46、prentices at Allis-Chalmers. The two young engineers formed a friendship that extended throughout their business and social lives, and included the marriage of Breer to Zeders sister. (Breer Collection)Fred Zeder Fred Zeders birthplace was Bay City, Michigan, where he was born on March 19, 1886. He
47、graduated from the University of Michigan in 1909 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. Immediately after graduating, Zeder was selected to the apprenticeship course of the Allis-Chalmers Company. After leaving West Allis, he completed a power plant erecting job in Detroit in
48、1910, then later that year joined the Everett-Metzger-Flanders Company (E.M.F.) where he assumed charge of its laboratory while still acting as a consultant in power plant work. E.M.F. was located in the center of Detroits many automotive activities on Piquette Street east of Woodward. Nearby, Fishe
49、r Brothers built auto bodies for E.M.F. Also on Piquette Street were the Regal Car Company and the Henry Ford Com- pany. General Motors at that time had a laboratory near Woodward and Piquette consisting of a 50 100 ft two-story building with a foundry below. Then, in sequence, the Studebaker Brothers of South Bend took over the E.M.F. enterprise and started to build their own car bodies. In 1913 Fred became consult- ing engineer for the Studebaker Corporation, and a year later was promoted to chief engineer. The production of Studebaker cars r
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