Rare Chrysler Airflows roll into Helena for first Montana meet

Rare Chrysler Airflows rolled into Centennial Park on June 24 as Helena hosted the Airflow Club of America’s 61st National Meet, the first time the club’s traveling annual gathering has landed in Montana. The car show and judging were held alongside the Best Western-Great Northern, with local listings expecting 15 to 20 Chrysler and DeSoto Airflows on display.

The Airflow Club of America has held an annual meet every year since 1964 and has never repeated a location. Founded in 1962, the club published its first newsletter in July of that year and staged its first annual meet in Detroit two years later, when 20 Airflows showed up. By its 50th anniversary meet in Dayton, Ohio, the club counted 52 Airflows.

Chrysler built the Airflow from 1934 to 1937, and the 1934 Chrysler Airflow was the first truly streamlined automobile in the United States. Its development drew on hundreds of wind-tunnel tests and introduced ideas that later became standard, including early unibody construction, a lower center of gravity and greater passenger comfort. Chrysler engineers also learned, through wind-tunnel testing, that some contemporary cars were so aerodynamically inefficient they performed better when driven backward.

The Airflow sold weakly even in the Depression, and Chrysler sold Airstream models alongside the Airflow from 1934 through 1937. Total Airflow production was about 27,878 cars over four years, and club materials put the number still believed to exist at about 700.

Airflow Club of America president David Felderstein said the meet never repeats cities, and Chandler Smith said there is not a car on the road today that does not owe something to the Airflow. The club has about 400 members in the United States, Canada and seven other countries, and its newsletter now goes out six times a year.