Carl Breer

Breer wanted a job and experience, so he applied at the Tourist Automobile Company (a major United States west coast manufacturer of automobiles at the time), located then at North Main and Alameda Street in Los Angeles.[14] He had no prior job experience to offer to the head of the service garage, but demonstrated his steam car he made that he drove there. This obtained for him the first official engineering job during his summer vacations from high school to demonstrate, service and design steam-powered automobiles.[15][16] This led to other similar job opportunities from East Coast steam-powered automobiles such as Toledo Steam Cars, the Spalding, the Northern, and the White Steamer. He was also a developer of the cutting edge two-cylinder steam powered Durocar that had advanced mechanical features.[3][5][17]

Los Angeles Commercial High School that he attended had no credit standing for an official mechanical engineer. In 1904 he drove his steam car from Los Angeles to Pasadena and showed it to Throop Polytechnic Institute (forerunner of Caltech). The school enrolled him in a one-year term which he completed with full credits as a mechanical engineer. He then qualified to be able to go to Stanford University in the fall of 1905 to learn advanced mechanical engineering.[3][18]

Breer graduated from Stanford University in 1909 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and became a mechanical engineer.[19] He soon received a job opportunity from Allis-Chalmers of West Allis, Wisconsin near Milwaukee and initially went through their two-year apprenticeship course. Allis-Chalmers selected twenty-five of the best students of mechanical engineering from top universities of the United States. Besides Breer, Frederick Morrell Zeder was such a student. Zeder was from the University of Michigan. Breer and Zeder became close friends in their training at Allis-Chalmers.[3][5][17]

1918 Studebaker "special six"

Breer moved to California in 1911 and was employed by the Moreland Motor Truck Company. He helped organize the Home Electric Auto Works company in 1914, but soon lost interest and sold his ownership share to his partner. He then built for himself a combination experimental garage and shop in 1916. In this same year he received a letter from his friend Fred Zeder asking if he would be interested in joining him at Studebaker to organize a research division. Zeder was then chief engineer at Studebaker and was developing a new engineering department for them. He also invited Owen R. Skelton to Studebaker, bringing together the Zeder-Skelton-Breer engineering team, which came to be known as "The Three Musketeers".[3][5][17]

Zeder's job was to develop engineering that replaced the obsolete Studebaker models. The engineers worked together efficiently and produced cutting-edge engineering technology that resulted in immediate profits for Studebaker. The "Big Six" Studebaker 1918 spring models came with such things as a unique clutch, lower center of gravity design, and detachable cylinder heads. Studebaker was so confident of the new technology that they discontinued making horse-drawn carriages in 1919.[20]

Breer formed a close relationship with Fred M. Zeder and later with Owen R. Skelton. They all had an engineering background. Skelton's expertise was as a technical engineering design analyst. Breer had the capacity to solve difficult technical engineering problems (especially in engines) with existing technology, and Zeder was a capable administrator and salesman as well as an engineer. Breer was the oldest of the three.[5]

Studebaker was involved in World War I obligations and built tanks for the United States Army. Breer was given the assignment of working on Liberty aircraft engines of the De Havilland biplane for the government during the end of World War I. His responsibility was to discover why the aircraft engines would break up and come apart. His work was analyzing the 50-hour engine tests. Many pilots were lost during the war because the engine would explode for no apparent reason within 50 hours. Breer eventually found that metal fatigue on certain connecting rods that came apart, then broke other parts. He was able to solve the problem eventually, but by then the war was over and the solution had no benefit for World War I pilots. However the solution was beneficial to pilots that followed, the airmail carriers particularly.[3][21]

Walter P. Chrysler had just left Buick and General Motors and joined Willys enterprises as their vice-president in January 1920. Chrysler asked the Breer, Zeder and Skelton if they wanted to join him at Willys-Overland. Breer with his two cohort engineers made several business trips to New York and the new cutting edge high-tech Willys factory in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The three elite engineers decided this would be an excellent move for them - and 28 other engineers from Studebaker (creme-de-la-creme). They all went to work designing a new car for Willys-Overland – the "Chrysler". It was soon discovered that the Willys Corporation was out of money due to one of their branches taking all the reserves. Willys was bankrupt. Chrysler resigned from Willys in 1922 and became chairman of the board for Maxwell Motor Company.[22]

Durant's Locomobile

1924 Chrysler B-70 Touring Cars

Breer and his two cohorts formed a consultant business located in Newark, New Jersey - The Zeder, Skelton and Breer Engineering Company (initially financed by Chrysler), which consisted of other engineers from Studebaker. They rented from the Willys receivers the laboratories they had already established at the high tech plant at Elizabeth, New Jersey. The plant went up for auction from receivership and William C. Durant bought it for $5.5 million. Even though Chrysler help them gert started in their consultant business, they contacted Durant for business since he bought the plant.[23]

Durant wanted his failed Mercer car plant in Scranton rejuvenated and asked the Zeder, Skelton and Breer Engineering Company to go there. After seeing the old brewery building where the cars were being made they decided against moving there. Breer and his cohort engineers settled on a deal with Durant instead to design a new engine for Durant's Locomobile, a car company Durant acquired in 1922. The company of high end automobiles for the Durant Motor Company went out of business, but not due to the engines which were satisfactory. Breer and his engineers then designed another engine for Durant, ultimately built by Continental Motors of Detroit. The plant where the actual automobile was built was located in Flint, Michigan. The "Flint car" was designed to compete with the Ford automobile and called the "Star". Breer and his cohorts had nothing to do with the "Star" car design, just the engine.[24][25]

In 1923 when Breer was on vacation with the family in California when Zeder and Skelton had a meeting with Mr. Chrysler in New York about the possibility of installing their engine in a new car and calling it a "Chrysler". The three engineers designed a car and started working with engineering at Maxwell Motor Company where Mr. Chrysler was the vice-president. It was to become Chrysler's first car,[26] the 1924 Model B Chrysler. The 'Three Musketeers' (Zeder, Skelton, and Breer) and their group of engineers (originally from Studebaker) were now working for Maxwell Motor Company. This new car with the three engineers' engine needed $5 million to start its production, which the Maxwell Motor Company could not furnish. The Chrysler automobile was to be shown at the 1924 New York Auto Show which likely would have produced and secured the loan necessary for production. Because the "Chrysler" was not in official production it did not qualify to be shown. However Chrysler rented the lobby at the Hotel Commodore (show's headquarters) and displayed the "Chrysler" there.[27] The necessary financing was secured from Chase Securities Corporation. Chrysler produced 32,000 automobiles in 1924 and sold them for the same price as the Buick. The $5 million loan produced a profit of over $4 million. The Maxwell Motor Company was reformed into the Chrysler Corporation in 1925.[28][29]

The first class of the Chrysler Engineering School was formed from sixteen engineering graduates with degrees in professional fields. They were selected in September 1931 from several hundred candidates representing fifteen universities. There was consideration given to their academic and personal qualifications for their selection. Breer was instrumental in expediting the school along with Zeder which they took inspiration from being alumni of the Allis-Chalmers student apprenticeship course years before.[30] They based their curriculum on the major industrial schools in the United States and the Chrysler way of engineering.[31] The leading universities accepted credit from this school towards advanced degrees.[32]

1934 Chrysler Airflow

One day in the late twenties while driving Breer saw a formation of Republic Army planes flying low across the highway in the distance. This lead him to consider the idea of airflow and a relationship to cars.[33] Wind tunnels for aeronautical purposes were very expensive, so one of the engineers consulted with Orville Wright. In a few months time they had made a 20 X 40 space as an aerodynamic lab for testing various shapes of small car models. The wind tunnel they built had a throat of 20 inches X 30 inches in cross section. The wind creating propellers were driven by a 35 hp motor that could be regulated for various speeds. The first models they tested were of production cars. The results were shown by black smoke from an oil lamp.[34]

When the aerodynamists were doing their tests, Breer suggested they test the models in the opposite direction. They were astonished to find that the air resistance drag was 30% less this way. Breer looking out a window then made the remark

Just think how dumb we have been. All those cars have been running in the wrong direction![35]

This test resulted in the idea that an automobile shape should not be box-shaped,[36] but like a blimp in front and tapered off to a smaller section in the rear. This made air flow much more efficient since it then would be close to the body as it flowed toward the rear. Breer's idea of running a car in the opposite direction for streamlining was the birth of the Chrysler Airflow automobile.[35] The first experimental Airflow cars were the model Trifon of the later 1920s, prototypes done in secret.[37] The Airflow was first produced in 1934[38] and continued through 1937 when it was determined that the sales were so poor it was not worth producing.[39][40]

Popular wisdom is that the Airflow was a failure. While it is true that commercially it was unsuccessful, its massive change in profile, use of a modern (and heretofore unknown) space frame instead of a 'ladder chassis', and its reconfiguration of the auto's basic design and a massive redistribution of weight, all made it one of the most important car designs of the thirties. That it was ahead of its time, out of synch with popular taste, and did not sell does not diminish either its innovation or its artistic and technological merit and long term importance.[41] Breer wrote in his published autobiography (Parts III - V) about the Airflow Car.[42] It was replaced by a model called Airstream, that sold better.[43]