So, thanks for joining us today. In front of me is Ralph Gilles, chief of design for Chrysler. We're at the Detroit Yacht Club celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chrysler. So, very cool. You know, Ralph, to me, Chrysler design has always kind of seen cutting edge, like just trying to get out ahead of everyone else. Is that kind of how you view it or, you know, what are key points for you?
Absolutely. We've kind of always been a bit of the underdog. You know, there's always been the Cadillacs, let's be honest, you know that that kind of take take the center stage but Chrysler being an upstart even when it was founded 100 years ago to the day practically, it's been looking to not only innovate but also break the mold. The Airflow is one of those vehicles that we have here today driving around and in the 40s when we were experimenting, you know, try to see how beautiful we would make the car and we actually literally shipped frames to Italy which at the time was making the most gorgeous metal and the new part behind me is an example of that, the 1941, they're actually both Thunder huge shapes. I mean things that you can only pen and couldn't imagine actually coming to. You have to remember in those days cars still had loose fenders. They still had the typical look of the fuselage fenders. So Chrysler was innovating how to close that off. How to be more aerodynamic, sleeker and actually more robust looking.
Yeah. I mean you mentioned the Airflow. Airflow in '34. You look at it now and it looks almost like a vehicle from the 50s. Like I can't imagine what it must have looked like in the day, absolute failure in the marketplace because it was maybe about 15 years ahead of its time. But that's the thing, right?
Innovating, fighting white space, we like to say in our industry where it's an underserved customer, an underserved emotion, underserved need. And a lot of vehicles, the PT Cruiser was one of those vehicles. It had some of the Airflow ideas in it. But that one was successful. We sold almost two million of those around the world over its lifespan.
Yeah, the Airflow almost kind of reminds me of the Citroen DS, you know, just the way it kind of sticks out for the era that it came out in.
The audience even knows what I think a few, I feel like a few of them do have, Guard Company which ironically happens to be part of the Stellantis group so well. My father has one as well so in the garage.
I feel like a few people in our audience will know but you know kind of moving down the line here you were talking about the the Chronos concept as being one of your favorite of the vehicles out here why is it so important to you?
Well because I mean these were, you know, these three here were the GIA cars we call them and there's a few others that came partnerships with the Italians. Then, you know, when I came to Chrysler a few years later, we were doing some pretty cool stuff. You know, Tom Gale and his team, John Herlitz, they were really pushing the envelope on how grand can we make the Chrysler brand, you know, in the Atlantic here was a straight eight engine car. I remember when this came out of Detroit Motor Show, some very very wealthy oil baron jumped on stage, grabbed the mic out of the product specialist, and said, 'I want to buy this car right here, right now.' I mean we don't have to be escorted out by security but it had that effect where it was so grand so special and it evokes, you know, the Bentleys and the Delahaye of the 40s.
Oh 100%. But to me that was maybe a little too old school, you know, so when Chicago, a wonderful designer who left our company years ago, he worked on this car with a few other team members, he was using the spirit of the GIA cars. If you look at the GS Palei with the blue with the center fuselage grill and the headlamps are high positioned and the very very bold kind of penetrating fender up bulges. That's what's in this vehicle. See it has the GIA type presence, some covered headlights. A lot of character in this front end. But when we did the car it was really a one-off thing just an exercise to see and people really liked it. People, I personally loved it. I was a junior designer in studios back in '98. And a few years later, we got the assignment, I became director of the rear drive studio to do the 300, which at the time was replacing the 300M. So, the idea would be just go sleeker, right? But then, this car, we couldn't get this out of our minds. A few other designers, Mr. Hubick, who passed away unfortunately a few years ago, he had a sketch that embodied this idea with the high shoulders, and that caught my eye. Now, he was just doing the advanced work, so we took it to production, and people tried to kill that sketch. I go, 'No, no, there's something in it.' So we developed it and tried to prove that we can make this retro look as modern as possible. That's how the 300 came to be. But really this is one that started it all and really in a way establish a new look for Chrysler well into the 2000s.
Yeah, I feel like you can really see the 300 in there. And I mean obviously such an important vehicle for the company as well. So yeah, really resonated with people out in the real world. You know, kind of moving over, we see the Pacifica here. That's kind of new era kind of stuff. Even coming out with a 100th anniversary edition.
Pacifica, we've been leaders in this segment for well over 40 years. Really, you know, yeah, there was a microbus. People argue Volkswagen was first, but that wasn't really a comfortable vehicle to drive. This was a car-like driving position. People love it to this day. They love the command of the road. In fact, most of the SUVs that you know today have copied our seat height. It's the magic perfect seat height to see ahead of you, to feel safe, but not be so high that you can't jump in it. But we have to remind people that minivans do more than just our minivans, right? So with the Stow 'n Go seats you get in the PHEV, the plug-in hybrid, which has removable seats and then the gas version has disappearing seats and you can literally do in about 30 seconds if you're good at it. You the record is at 13 seconds which I hold.
