The auto industry’s pioneers offer some very interesting history. Today, we’ll dig a little into the story of Walter P. Chrysler and his humble beginning.
At age 33 in about the year 1908, he was a worker at the Union Pacific Railroad shops in Olwein, Iowa. He traveled to Chicago to see the annual automobile show. There he saw a Locomobile that sold for $5,000 (about $159,000 today’s dollars) and he was hooked.
He was earning $350 (about $11,150 today) a month and wanted to buy the car. That may have been the beginning of automobile finance. Three years later, he owned the Locomobile, but he wasn’t interested in driving it but rather in seeing how it was made.
In 1925, Chrysler bought the assets of the failing Maxwell Motor Co. to form his own company. The last successful Maxwell model was called the Chrysler Six, so when Maxwell Motors reorganized, the name was changed to Chrysler Corp. with guess-who as its president and board chairman.
Plymouth brand was the first new brand created by Chrysler to enter the low-priced segment. Their first model was in 1928, and it did well as a two-door sedan sold for $675 or about $12,445 in today’s dollars. Later, Chrysler added DeSoto and bought the Dodge Brothers Co., a company larger than Chrysler that had excellent products plus a good dealer organization. By 1931, Plymouth had become the third best-selling car in the country.
In the 1960s, American compact cars were becoming popular, starting with the Nash Rambler and followed by the Studebaker Lark. In the next couple of years, the Big Three automakers (then Chrysler, GM and Ford) jumped into that segment and took over with the Plymouth Valiant, Chevrolet Corvair and Ford Falcon. The Valiant had a European look that wasn’t widely appreciated, the Corvair had the rear engine challenge and the Falcon had more traditional styling.
This issue’s featured vehicle is a 1964 Plymouth Valiant Signet 200 convertible, the top of the line. Roger Rush, of Alameda, is the car’s second owner. The former owner had one condition before he would sell — Rush had to promise he wouldn’t turn this car into a hot rod.
“I told him it was too pretty to hot-rod,” Rush said.
He paid the man $1,500 for the car and has kept his promise.
“I bought it in 2000 from a true gentleman in Atherton who had bought it new for his wife,” Rush said. “It was a good driver. He had bought his wife a new car, and this one had some parking lot dents. He had parked it in his garage, and it was covered with cardboard boxes. I couldn’t even see it. The paint was tired, the interior was worn, but it ran. I gave it a tune-up and put new tires on it, drove it in that condition for about four years.”
This Valiant is equipped with Chrysler’s famous 145-horsepower, 225-cubic-inch slant-six engine with push-button drive. The car has 168,000 miles on it, and everything mechanical is original. It has never required anything other than routine maintenance. Rush has done all the work on this car himself except for the upholstery.
1 of 5
“I did all the body work and painting at our Alameda community college,” he said. “They have body and paint courses over there. I enrolled in the courses, and I got to do an independent study. So I got to use their professional paint booth, and I took everything down to bare metal.”
The College of Alameda’s cost was $52 a semester, and Rush took about two semesters to paint the car flawlessly and get it looking like it was just driven off the showroom floor. He duplicated the factory interior as close as he could and said he thinks his total investment is about $5,000, not counting sweat equity.
Rush estimates the current market value at $13,000 to $15,000, but he’s a collector and not a trader. This is just one of three 1964 Valiants in his collection, none of which are for sale.
Have an interesting vehicle? Email Dave at [email protected]. To read more of his columns or see more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.