$3,305,000 FOR ONE CHRYSLER — A NEW RECORD
It was built for Walter P. Chrysler himself, from a sketch that ran in a 1929 Fortune article — a concept car before the phrase existed.
🔴 $3,305,000. That is the new record price for a Chrysler.
American Cars And Racing reports the one-of-a-kind 1932 Chrysler CH Imperial Speedster sold for $3,305,000 at RM Sotheby's Monterey auction, more than doubling the previous Chrysler record of $1.6 million set by another Imperial in 2023.
The car was designed by Chrysler's Art Department for founder Walter P. Chrysler himself, based loosely on a sketch that ran in a 1929 Fortune article about him. The factory's Custom Body Shop built it: stretched hood, pontoon fenders with built-in tool lockers, a full-size spare stashed in a slide-out tray hidden in the tail.
Engineers fitted an experimental high-compression aluminum cylinder head good for around 160 horsepower, a vacuum-operated automatic clutch and a free-wheeling unit. A concept car before the term existed.
The provenance is where it gets strange.
After Walter P. died in 1940, the car ended up abandoned in the dunes behind a Provincetown, Massachusetts body shop when storage bills went unpaid. In 1965 his son traded it to impressionist Angelo Ippolito for $5,000 worth of art. Collector Al Nippert bought it soon after and held it 25 years before selling to Sam and Emily Mann in 1989.
The Manns restored it and won Best of Show at the 1991 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.
It sold this year out of the Mann Collection, alongside Clark Gable's 1935 Duesenberg JN Convertible Coupe, which went for $9,080,000.
Would you have paid $3.3 million for it?
#causeanuproar #Chrysler #RMSothebys #Monterey #ClassicCars
First reported by
American Cars And Racing
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