Every year at the Pebble Beach Concurs D’Elegance, they select a few marques to feature in their own special classes. Often, they’re legendary names like Pierce-Arrow or Bentley or Adler or Saturn. Sometimes they choose a brand to commemorate something, like how they did this year for Chrysler, in honor of their centennial. This is a huge honor, and pretty much any brand should feel the warmth and glow of such an accolade, and, ideally, would be able to leverage that to their brand’s current lineup. At least, that’s how it should be.
But that’s not the case with Chrysler. That’s because Chrysler is very literally a shell of its former self, void not just of glory and cultural impact, but also of cars themselves, since modern Chrysler’s lineup is just one car, and that car is a minivan.
Oh, sure, they claim they have three cars, but it’s really just one minivan, in three trim levels:
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with minivans, or even the Pacifica, which is a genuinely good minivan! At least it was, nine and a half years ago, when I drove it last, during the release event Chrysler held. That’s the current Chrysler lineup, everybody. One solitary minivan that’s just about a decade old.
Up until 2023, they had two cars, the other being the still-handsome Chrysler 300, which, at the time of its retirement, was 19 years old. Well, there was an update in 2011, but it wasn’t exactly a new car by any stretch. Still, at least the 300 had some presence and style, even if it was an aging survivor of the Daimler-Chrysler years. But it’s been gone for two years now.
So, as you may imagine, as we walked along the manicured grass of Pebble Beach, being pushed aside by wealthy people, their expensively-lotion’d palms feeling warm and smooth against your face as they shove, it was hard not to look at these jewels from Chrysler’s past, all shiny and arrayed beautifully on the green, and not compare them to the state of Chrysler as it stands today.
In fact, David and I did just that, and committed it to video:
Maybe it feels like we’re being cruel, but the sad truth is that I feel like I had forgotten about Chrysler until I was confronted with cars like this beautiful butter-colored Airflow:
Back when it came out in 1934, the Airflow was revolutionary. It was the first full-sized American car to really use a streamlined design, and, while not a full unibody, did use some unibody elements in its construction. It was a revolution technically and in design, and also upheld Chrysler’s high standards of luxury. It was also something of a colossal failure, but a noble one, as its focus on aerodynamics would be proven correct in pretty much all modern cars.
It was a risk, a bold, interesting risk, and the sort of thing that I cannot imagine modern Chrysler doing.
I saw Chrysler Imperials, which reminded me that once Chrysler was a rival to the most prominent luxury makes in America, Cadillac and Lincoln, and could go head-to-head with European contenders when it came to pure luxury. Chrysler briefly spun off Imperial into its own brand, but it was always known to be part of Chrysler.
Chrysler had so many luxurious options back in the day: the LeBarons and New Yorkers, massive barges of air-conditioning and comfort that telegraphed your power and status for a five-block radius, penetrating the poured concrete of buildings.
The cars chosen for Pebble included a number of stunning mid-century Chrysler show cars, like the Ghia-designed car that would eventually become the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia, the D’Elegance:
…and this similar Ghia design, the Chrysler Special:
Beautiful cars! Beautiful Chryslers. And Chrysler of the past would sometimes actually realize in production form bold designs like this, even into fairly recent times. Remember, the Chrysler Crossfire wasn’t so very long ago, being introduced in 2004, and it was a bold styling exercise:
And that small, two-seat sportscar with dramatic, sorta-retro, sorta-not styling existed alongside sensible and comfortable minivans and sedans and wagons and other cars.
Chrysler was always an up-market brand, but one that had the breadth and reach and ability to cover a pretty huge spectrum of car types and niches.
So, what happened to Chrysler? It’s absolutely seen some rough times, almost going out of business in the 1980s, but it clawed its way back, and even if the cars it was producing then weren’t exactly stellar – because, let’s be honest, they weren’t – Chrysler at least still seemed to try, to have some fight left in it, and was willing to do what it took to make the best of the K-Car-based hand it was dealt, and try to emphasize technology like turbochargers and Texas Instruments voice-synthesis chips to make their New Yorkers talk to you, trying to convince you that doors were jars.
Chrysler didn’t give up, is my point here, and even when times were tough they knew who they were – or at least who they wanted to be – and they did all they could to achieve that.
But now? Chrysler feels like it’s given up. It feels like a company glumly plopping out a nearly ten-year-old minivan, without much real hope or ideas for the future. Oh, sure, they had that Halcyon concept car last year, but that really just made the brand feel more lost, and have you heard anything about it since then? Plans for production of even some kind of watered-down production version? No, you haven’t.
Chrysler once actually tried things, bold things, difficult things. They made the PT Cruiser, a retro design that was just fun, because fun is fun, and it was pretty affordable, too. They had their series of cab-forward “Cloud Cars” that tried some interesting styling and packaging concepts, they had minivans, of course, and also two different four-seat convertibles and a two-seat convertible, all at once! That’s an impressive and interesting selection of vehicles!
And now? One minivan.
Modern Chrysler feels like it’s just killing time until Stellantis decides to pull the plug. And maybe, before I went to Pebble Beach, I could have been okay with that grim outcome, because I’d hardly given Chrysler any thought.
But now that I’m reminded of what they once were, how they once reacted to the times, the sorts of cars they once made, the image they held of themselves, now that all of that has been percolating in my gelatinous mind, now I’m kind of pissed.
This beautiful array of classic Chryslers was both a celebration of a brand hitting the century mark and a wake-up call to that very brand. Chrysler, I hope you had some people walking the green at Pebble this year. I hope they looked at all of those incredible cars. And I hope they felt a pain in the pit of their stomachs, a pain that I hope turns into some kind of resolve to smack around some people at Stellantis and remind them that Chrysler is worth saving.
Don’t go down this easy, Chrysler. Jam that one aging minivan of yours into gear and get your assess moving again. It’s time. Wake up.
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