Taking a Third Option: 1957 Chrysler Royal AP1

The rise of Chrysler Australia in many ways parallels that of Holden. Both companies began as Adelaide coachbuilders in the 19th Century, and both made the shift to motor vehicles begrudgingly, under the influence of the founders' offspring. But where Holden seemed to live a charmed life, only ever going from strength to strength, Chrysler spent its entire life parked in Struggle Street. 

Protestant Work Ethic
As GM-H began with James Alexander Holden, so Chrysler Australia began with a man: Tobias John Martin Richards. Born in Montacute, South Australia in 1850, he learned his trade as a coachbuilder and blacksmith working for Ludwig Maraun of Pirie Street, Adelaide – only a block over from the Grenfell Street premises of Holden & Frost. By 1885, Richards had the means to strike out on his own, founding T.J. Richards Ltd in what was then West Mitcham, south of Adelaide. Richards became a respected name in the business, responsible for a number of award-winning buggies and coaches – most notably his plush "King of the Road" sulky. The business did well, and in 1900 T.J. Richards expanded to a new half-acre premises on the west side of Hindmarsh Square. In 1907 the workshop was expanded to two storeys, and the old West Mitcham shop was wound up as no longer necessary. By the time Richards retired in 1911, the business was valued at £25,000 (nearly $4.3 million in 2024). 

Where it all began: the original workshop at Mitcham.

During this time, Richards' dearly-beloved, Matilda, had borne him nine children. Six of their offspring were sons, of whom four eventually went into their father's business in some capacity or another. Eldest son Herbert had a strained relationship with the old man, so he left to strike out on a motor business venture of his own. That left the company to his second and third sons, Henry and Claude respectively, which was renamed T.J. Richards & Sons in their honour. After Henry tragically died in a motorcycle accident in May 1915, Claude became the sole company head.

Like their cross-town rivals at Holden & Frost, T.J. Richards & Sons gravitated across to motor vehicles only slowly, producing their first experimental car body in 1905. Tobias refused to consider that the horse might ever be supplanted and never owned a car himself, so it was largely the enthusiasm of Claude that drove their investigation into this new industry. T.J. Richards & Sons made their last horse-drawn vehicle in 1915.

The Keswick plant. (Source: State Library of SA)

After the Great War, T.J. Richards & Sons feasted on the bonanza of imported chassis in need of bodies, constructing them for brands as diverse as Austin, Citroën, Fiat, Morris, Studebaker, Dodge Brothers and Hudson. In February 1920, the company bought a three-acre site at the northern corner of Bay Road (soon to be Anzac Highway) and Leader Street, for £1,900 ($168,000). Although technically located in Forestville, it became known as the Keswick plant because it lay just south of the Keswick Army Barracks (now the Army Museum of South Australia). By April 1925, the Keswick plant had been extended along Leader Street to cover nearly seven acres. By mid-1926, the company employed 425 people building more than 5,000 bodies a year on simple production lines, resulting in annual turnover of some £200,000 (more than $20 million). By 1928, Richards was the second-largest body-builder in Australia, behind only (of course) Holden's Motor Body Builders Ltd. Between them, Richards and Holden's produced about 80 percent of Australia's car, truck and tram bodies in those days.

Walt
Around the same time, former Buick manager Walter P. Chrysler took over the ailing Maxwell Motor Company in the United States and reformed it into his shiny new Chrysler Corporation. Maxwell had been hit hard by the post-WWI recession and found themselves deeply in debt, with spiralling build quality issues killing all demand for their cars. Having performed corporate resuscitations like this before (most notably with Willys-Overland), Walter Chrysler took on the challenge and moved his headquarters to their Highland Park office in Detroit, Michigan. Chrysler soon absorbed the Dodge Brothers Company and, following the tenets of Sloanism, founded the Plymouth and DeSoto brands in 1928. If you wore overalls and worked for a wage, you bought a Plymouth; if you wore a button-up shirt and worked for a salary, you bought a Dodge or DeSoto. And if you wore a full suit and didn't need to work at all, only then could you contemplate a luxurious Chrysler or Imperial.

Soon Chrysler was looking to expand overseas, and naturally his eye was drawn to Australia. In January 1930, T.J Richards & Sons signed a contract with Chrysler for the manufacture of 5,000 Dodge and DeSoto bodies. The deal was worth a colossal £500,000 (over $52 million in 2024), so to fulfil it Richards bought a new 5.7-acre site on the northern side of Scotland Road, just to the west of Adelaide in Mile End South. Ironically, this plant had lately been the home of South Australia's Ford distributors, Duncan & Fraser Ltd, who'd just been (quite deliberately) driven out of business by Ford Australia. The site, running between Railway Terrace and the Holdfast Bay railway line, cost £17,500 ($1.8 million) and opened in early 1931.

The distinctive "Chrysler Dodge Plymouth DeSoto" sign was a local landmark for decades.

Unfortunately, by the time the plant opened Australia was in the heart of the Great Depression, and as Chrysler were forced to drastically wind back production, so imports of chassis into Australia dried up. For the financial year 1931-'32, T.J. Richards posted losses of more than £31,000 ($3.6 million), and their employee payroll dropped to just 98 workers, all at Keswick. Thankfully, August 1932 saw them land a £100,000 ($12.3 million) contract to manufacture a thousand bodies for the Standard company of Britain, pulling the company back from the brink. By mid-1934, they were firmly on the rebound, back to employing around 1,400 workers – 900 at Keswick, which concentrated on metal stamping and fabrication, and 500 at Mile End South, which was dedicated to assembly. By 1935, Richards was producing 11,000 bodies per year – forty a day – and they were able to pay shareholders their first dividend since 1930. Profits for the decade peaked at £45,106 (just over $5.2 million) for the financial year 1936-'37.

It was at this point the dealers came knocking. In December 1936, the eighteen largest Chrysler distributors in Australia had decided to unionise merge to increase their bargaining power with Highland Park. The resulting company became Chrysler Dodge Distributors (Australia) Ltd, and they quickly began throwing their weight around. With Ford now consolidated in Geelong and Holden's Motor Body Builders Ltd recently absorbed into GM, they needed to move quickly to secure their supply chain. Their gaze naturally turned to the largest supplier of Chrysler bodies in the country, T.J. Richards & Sons, in which they bought a controlling interest. Reassuring any jittery workers that their jobs would remain secure, CDD allowed Richards to renew or pursue fresh contracts with rival brands like Packard, Standard, Studebaker and Willys-Overland, and in mid-1938 they moved their headquarters from Melbourne to Adelaide.

With these windfalls, T.J. Richards & Sons was able to upgrade both Keswick and Mile End South, with all paint shop and upholstering duties transferred to the latter. By May 1938, Richards employed 3,280 workers and had a turnover close to £2 million ($227 million) – a ten-fold increase on 1930. That same year they also beat Holden to the punch when they produced Australia's – and indeed one of the world's – first all-steel car bodies. Developed under the influence of Maurice Richards, grandson of Tobias, the "Safe-T-Steel" body consisted of a single-piece steel roof, one-piece steel body panels and doors, and a steel floor, all welded together into a single unit. From 1937, all Richards-made Chryslers were fabricated in steel.

Then of course war returned, and T.J. Richards & Sons – like Holden and Ford before them – were subsumed into the Department of Munitions, producing land mine casings, ammunition boxes, cable drums and mountings for 2-pounder anti-tank guns. In September 1941, the company renamed itself Richards Industries Ltd, feeling it was more in-keeping with their expanded portfolio, and after 1942 they focused almost exclusively on aircraft panels, such as for the Bristol Beaufort, Avro Lancaster bomber and CAC Wirraway trainer.

Chrysler Australia Ltd
Once peace returned, Richards Industries wasted no time reverting back to motor vehicles, expanding the Mile End South facility again and, in September 1949, buying the wartime aircraft factory for £37,175 ($2.6 million). Although progress was slowed by post-war resource shortages, by mid-1946 Richards was already producing more than 500 bodies per week, and employing more than 2,500 workers (up from a wartime minimum of 2,000).

In October 1947 the inevitable finally happened, as CDD finally acquired one-hundred percent of Richards Industries Ltd – securing the company's future, but also ending the family's association with the business their ancestor had founded. Association with other marques was wound up as they focused on Chrysler products. By 1950, Mile End South was approaching its maximum extent of nine acres, and assembly of an almost-complete vehicle from sub-assembled panels took just thirteen minutes. Their net profit for 1949-'50 was £156,330 (more than $10 million) – almost double that of two years earlier – while gross turnover was £4.75 million ($309 million), more than twenty times what they'd seen before the war.

Numbers like that attracted attention, and at long last the Chrysler Corporation itself began to take notice. As early as 1949 there were rumours the U.S. giant was looking to assume full control of CDD, but the consortium rejected an initial £700,000 ($45.5 million) takeover offer in November 1950. Undeterred, in June 1951, Chrysler finally succeeded in buying 85 percent of CDD's ordinary shares and thereby gained a controlling interest in the company, which they promptly renamed to reflect its new status. Chrysler Australia Ltd was in business.

They hit the ground running. October 1951 saw the new bosses embark on a £1 million ($55 million) modernisation and expansion programme, including reorganising Mile End South in accordance with American mass-production techniques. A range of minor parts (such as steering boxes) were made at the Perry Engineering foundry and stamping plants, adjacent to Mile End South. They brought in the dies and tooling to begin stamping panels for the latest 1953 Plymouth, which was then sold as the Plymouth Cranbrook, Dodge Kingsway and DeSoto Diplomat – same cars underneath, just with different grilles and badging. It was a cynical attempt to appeal to more affluent buyers, but we've already established that the Kingsway cost £1,787, so affluent buyers were likely to be the only kind...

Rather gorgeous promotional image of the Diplomat. "1956" plate on 1953 curves unnecessary to know this is a local image, just check the hills behind them. This could only be Australia.

The engine was Chrysler's side-valve "PowerFlow" inline six, a lump that hadn't meaningfully changed since the 1930s (nor would it before it was replaced in the early 1960s). This engine came as a crate unit from Chrysler's U.K. plant in Kew, west London, so although not local content it was at least being sourced within the Commonwealth, helping keep costs manageable. Despite a 230ci displacement, it could offer only 22 kW more than Holden's 132ci Grey, a problem when the car's full chassis meant a kerb weight of 1,512kg.

Few were head over heels for a Cranbrook, and fewer still even bought a Diplomat, but the Chrysler trinity nevertheless found their groove as tough rural cruisers that could handle rough roads without complaint and tolerate dodgy local petrol. In an Australia starved for new cars they actually sold pretty well, with 4,382 of them leaving the plants between 1951 and 1953. By 1954 the reorganisation of the assembly line was complete, a new paint shop and finishing line were in operation, and net profits rose to £858,388 ($38 million). Mid-1955 saw the company invest another £275,000 ($12 million) in a new plant at Mile End South, while another £500,000 went into a spare parts division at Keswick. Chrysler Australia now employed 4,300 workers, many of them newly-arrived immigrants.

Not strictly relevant, but I couldn't resist including this image (dated 17 Oct 1954) of a Chrysler Plymouth hire car that's had a crash with a tram on Pitt Street, Sydney. The relationship between Chrysler Australia and the hire car industry started early. (Source: SMH Archive via Facebook)

But despite this promising start to the decade, the outlook turned bleak after 1955. By the mid-1950s, Chrysler's offerings were being out-styled by the Chevrolet Bel Air, Ford Customline and, yes, the new FE Holden. The Cranbrook's shape – rounded, upright, rather stodgy – was rapidly going out of fashion as wide, flat and low-slung became the name of the game. The twin flat windscreens, although wonderfully cheap to make, gave it away as a design from the 1940s, with engine and suspension technology to match. Having started with a 10 percent market share in 1950, Chrysler gradually slipped to 4.8 percent by 1956. At this time, Holden's market share was climbing towards 50 percent, Ford enjoyed 15 percent, and even BMC Australia – recently formed from the merger of Austin and Morris – were managing about the same. Something had to be done.

What they really needed was one of the new designs being released by their parent company in the U.S. – something like the rather handsome 1955 Chrysler 300, which was making waves in early NASCAR. But this was out of the question: Highland Park was in fact in the process of paying back an enormous $250 million loan from Prudential Insurance (more than $3 billion in today's USD), so they were in no position to fund a whole new range for Australia. It was the familiar Catch-22 of the car industry, needing a new model to generate sales, but needing more sales to justify investment in the new model. Backed into a corner, Chrysler Australia's only option was to repackage what they already had, and just pray that the market fell for it. This was the line of thinking that led Chrysler to develop their first uniquely Australian model.

The Royal Treatment
The challenge confronting Chrysler Australia's tiny team of stylists and engineers was simple: how to cobble together a vehicle that looked new and fresh enough to revamp interest, when they weren't able to change any of the underlying tooling?

Through 1955, a small team of Australian and American designers tackled this very problem, looking for ways of adapting U.S. designer Virgil Exner's new "Forward Look" styling cues – long bonnets, low rooflines and huge fins – to a shape from the 1940s. The roof and doors of the '53 sedan were kept, but onto the front end they grafted the headlight surrounds, bonnet and grille of the upcoming U.S.-market '57 Plymouth. 

Promo image for the '57 Plymouth. That Chrysler Corp made some of the most ornate cars of their day is brought home when you remember this was meant to be the entry-level brand.

The front and rear guards were borrowed from the '56 Plymouth, while the rear quarter panels were redesigned with dramatic full-length fins. The front windscreen remained flat, but it became a single large piece instead of split like that on the old Cranbrook. They did add a properly Fifties wrap-around windscreen (creating development problems for Pilkington Glass, the Australian suppliers who struggled to get the right curved shape...) but then they put it at the wrong end, using it at the rear of the glasshouse instead of the front where it belonged! But considering the budget they had to work with, and the fact that Chrysler Australia didn't yet have a formal styling department, it was all kind of impressive.

By early 1956, seven disguised prototypes were busy racking up the miles on the back roads of South Australia, their identity hidden by the simple expedient of tying down tarps front and rear. Not even Holden had their own proving grounds yet, so open-road testing was still the industry standard. It might've been crude, but the prototypes logged over 100,000 miles with only minimal changes required before production could begin. But not everything went so smoothly.

Amazing how the simple device of removing the hub caps to expose the pressed-steel wheels underneath makes any car look like a junker on its way to the panel-beater.

Halfway through 1956, body engineer Doug Rohrsheim was busy attending meetings with Diecast Ltd to finalise supply of the various pieces of brightwork needed for the upcoming cars. The plan had been to carry through the Plymouth Belvedere, Dodge Kingsway and DeSoto Diplomat in order to supply their three dealer franchises. They were to be differentiated by separate badges, bonnet ornaments, grilles and wheel arches, with the Dodge earning a body-coloured split grille divider in the shorter front clip. The original designations for the three models had been AD1 for the Dodge, AS1 for the DeSoto and AP1 for the Plymouth.

At the last minute, however, chief engineer Roy Rainsford cancelled the Dodge and DeSoto versions, voiding most of the work Rohrsheim had just done. The Plymouth was to be the only game in town, and despite its lowly appointments, it would be sold as a Chrysler. It was at this point that it was finally given the "Royal" nameplate, resurrecting a name that had gone extinct in the U.S. a few years earlier. Instead of Australian Plymouth, the AP1 designation was retroactively changed to stand for "Australian Production": hence, the Chrysler Royal AP1.

Launch day: less a major industry media event and more a small-town annual show.

"Australia's Car of Distinction" was launched with full fanfare in February 1957, touted as, "setting the styling trends" with its interpretation of Exner's Forward Look styling philosophy. Chrysler boasted of its full-time power steering and "Safety-Sure" powered brakes, both innovations in the Australian market. Four colour combinations were offered – green, grey, blue and tan, each over "Moonlight" accents, combined into an elegant spear that thrust toward the front end. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was all looking rather good.

Instead, it immediately sank without a trace. People seemed to realise that the Royal wasn't quite the real thing, the car you bought when you couldn't afford a Chevrolet or Customline. The face was overwhelmed by that gargantuan radiator grille, which the single headlights and massive bumper overriders struggled to balance out. The wrap-around rear windscreen failed to distract from the high roof and carryover doors, and the tailfins were just silly, towering above the old, rounded boot lid. The hemispherical hub caps were simply from a bygone era. In short, the styling seemed to highlight the car's 1953 origins, not hide them, attempting to replicate American excess without understanding the substance beneath.

What the '57 Plymouth grille became when applied to the narrower Cranbrook body: a tad overpowering.

Things weren't much better on the engine front. Initially there were two of them to choose from: the existing 230ci side-valver, which gave 86 kW and was paired with a 3-on-the-tree manual (with automatic overdrive); or the bigger 250ci with 87 kW, sourced from Chrysler's Windsor plant in Canada (in both cases, assembly was now handled locally). In either spec, these ageing designs just didn't have the mumbo to compete with GM's more modern overhead-valve sixes, let alone Ford's new Y-block V8. 

Side-valve engines had a time and place, but by the late 1950s that wasn't beneath the bonnet of a prestige car.

Even so, the 250 was worth the extra money, as it came paired with Chrysler's excellent "PowerFlite" 2-speed automatic gearbox. In most markets the PowerFlite had already been superseded by the 3-speed TorqueFlite, but that just meant the tooling was available to send to Australia. Upon its U.S. launch, Chrysler had bragged the PowerFlite had 110 fewer parts and weighed 45kg less than an unnamed rival (almost certainly GM's Hydra-Matic), and would eventually prove tough enough to stand up to anything, including a Hemi V8. Early versions had been operated by a small selector lever on the dash, but since 1956 it had came with quirky push-button controls instead – you simply pressed "D" for drive, "N" for neutral, "R" for reverse, or "L" to lock it in the lower gear, such as when towing or climbing a hill (the parking brake was operated by a separate lever, so there was no button labelled "P"). It was such a simple, reliable system that – the ultimate flattery – the Soviets ripped it off and created their own version for their ZIL limousines!

The more I think about it, the less silly this system seems. Why take up cabin space for controls that merely resemble their manual counterparts?

Good as it was, the PowerFlite wasn't enough to sell the Royal all on its own. You splashed out on an American car because you wanted power, good looks and world-class build quality (believe it or not, "close enough for government work" originally meant higher standards). The latter points were right out out (build quality would remain a bugbear of the local industry until the end), but Chrysler remedied the power problem late in 1957, when their new 313ci "Fury" V8 joined the options list. The Canadians had taken Chrysler's new 318ci "A" engine and under-bored it to 313ci (so they could re-use existing tooling), so it came with a claimed 164 kW at 4,000rpm (plus 440 Nm of torque at 2,800rpm, though on Australian fuel both figures dropped significantly). This finally gave the car enough urge to match its fins: the top speed rose to 152km/h, and 0-100 could be achieved in 17.4 seconds (I've seen 13.5 seconds quoted in some places but that seems optimistic; ditto the "152mph" top speed!). Even so, it was still compromised: the V8 was so big installing it required butter and a shoehorn, and it was an oldschool V8 with heavy castings that exacerbated the Royal's front weight bias, placing extra strain on the feeble front brakes and soft suspension. Fuel consumption largely depended on how it was driven, but with a light foot it could get as good as 15 litres per 100km (compared to 13 or so for the manual six).

It also added a premium to the Royal's asking price, with one road test reporting the car they'd been allocated cost £2,179 ($81,000), including tax and the mandatory PowerFlite gearbox. The engine was ordered on fewer than 500 cars in its first year, but that proved to be a function of how late in the year it arrived; by the end of production, it was powering almost half of all Royals.

So the Chrysler Royal wasn't a great car, but here's the thing: there wasn't much actually wrong with it, either. Its Plymouth/Dodge/DeSoto predecessors had earned their place by being tough, simple and easy to repair, and all those things were still true of the Royal (mostly because it was still the same car underneath). Even if the cabin was a bit bare, the vinyl seats were comfy, the push-button auto was unbreakable, and parking was aided by the huge tailfins, which let you see exactly where the rear corners were. Farmers especially related to its rugged full chassis and uncomplicated design, and its only mechanical drawback – sheer size – was no bad thing in their eyes. The six-cylinder engines might not have been exciting, but they never gave you any trouble either, and most buyers weren't looking for a performance car anyway. That said, the V8 was fearsome for its time: former owners remember the many gutless British trucks running between Sydney and Melbourne in those days, which could add hours – literally – to a road trip if you got stuck behind them crawling up the hills. The brisk acceleration of the V8 had real uses back then.

Outside a handful of loyal private buyers, however, the Royal really only found its niche in government, taxi and hire car fleets. Hire companies particularly appreciated its lack of cutting-edge technology – when you were only running a vehicle for a profit, every penny spent on maintenance was another betrayal, and the Royal seemed to thrive on neglect. Thanks to their full chassis, Royals soon found themselves modified into ambulances, and they were also popular with funeral service directors as the basis for hearse conversions. And of course, the V8 made the Royal immediately popular as a highway patrol car for the South Australian police...

The original AP1 ambulance featured a fibreglass cabin extension developed by Commonwealth Engineering, or Comeng. (Source: Carswp)

Verdict?
So, was the Chrysler Royal a secret masterpiece, only let down by dodgy styling? No, not really. It was big, it was cumbersome, and even the V8 models were a tad gutless (though they frequently made the Royal the one-eyed man in the land of the blind – it was 1957, after all). But did it deserve a more enthusiastic reception than the tumbleweeds it actually got? I think the case could be made. Today, rarity alone makes them collectible, as only 4,748 AP1s were ever built, and even fewer were salted away to preserve them. The same kitschy looks that sank the Royal as a new car are now celebrated as quirky and "period".

But in its primary mission – returning Chrysler Australia to profitability – the Royal can only be judged a failure. Despite their best efforts, Chrysler's sales continued to slide, and the company would post huge financial losses for the next few years. The future looked bleak, but Chrysler Australia was only down, not out: after all they'd already been through, they were never going to give up that easily.