Chrysler: Fill & Download for Free

Back in the cold war years, the Chrysler corporation designed this little beauty:This was the Chrysler Bell Victory siren which used a Hemi V8 generating 180 HP that could produce 138 decibels at 100 feet. It was the most powerful siren ever produced, and was designed to be mounted on top of factories and office buildings.It was reportedly so powerful that it could start fires if operated on dry grass at ground level, and turn fog into rain. A rumor persists about over starting a tarpaper roof on fire when it was mounted too low, but I can find no hard evidence to that effect.Thanks to Richard Strachan and Chris Klinger for the corrections.

In the beginning, the Daimler-Chrysler merger appeared to make great sense. Chrysler had a long-standing and solid dealership network in the U.S., which Mercedes could use to distribute and service their products. Mercedes was also suffering from a lack of sales, due to their stuffy reputation and lack of exciting products. Chrysler, on the other hand, had several winning designs under their belt and their stylists were on-fire at the time.For Chrysler, they would be acquiring some Mercedes platforms and mechanical pieces, which they could use to build new products with, such as the Mercedes independent rear suspension, Chrysler Crossfire and the Chrysler ME Four-Twelve concept car.The problem was after the ink had dried, the cultures of the two corporations clashed. The rigid German structure and hierarchy of Mercedes was a horrible fit with the open, horizontal management structure of Chrysler. Ultimately the two simply couldn’t work together. I heard it put like this. Mercedes would tell Chrysler what to do, and Chrysler would tell Mercedes what they could do with themselves.I’ve actually witnessed similar culture clashes inside BMW before, with a strong, domineering German culture coming in to tell the “silly Americans” how to build cars.For Chrysler, this turned out OK in the end, since they were ultimately merged with Fiat to become FCA, which with the recent joining of several French companies, has become one of the largest car companies in the world, and far larger and more influential than Mercedes.

Triton is the trade name for the Ford 6.8 liter (415 cubic inch) V-10 engine. Chrysler never used the Ford engine.The Chrysler V-10 came in two basic formats. A cast iron truck engine and a cast aluminum sports car engine. Both were conventional OHV designs with non-Hemi heads and were heavily based on the Chrysler LA-series V8 engines. They displaced 488, 506 and 512 cubic inches (8.0, 8.3 and 8.4 liters) and produced as much as 645 horsepower in stock form.The reason Chrysler went with a V10, instead of building a larger V8 was originally for economic reasons. Chrysler already had the well-proven 318 and 360 engines in production for decades, and the parts and tooling for those had been well-sorted since the 1960’s. Instead of completely engineering a new larger V8 engine from scratch, to power their next generation of trucks with, it was easier to take a 360 V8, which already had a 4.00 inch bore and just add two cylinders to it, increasing the stroke and making it a 488 cubic inch V10. Most of the basic 360 parts would carry over and it would save a lot of development money.Because the firing events were closer together and distributed between more cylinders, the engine ran smoother than a comparable V8. The width and height of the engine was also the same as their existing small block V8. While it was longer, Chrysler had been working with cab forward designs in the 1990’s and could easily accommodate the extra inches of engine length under the firewall.As predicted, the V10 was just as reliable as the 360 V8, and proved to be a very capable powerplant for the 2500 and 3500 series trucks, including duallies.When Chrysler decided to build a roadster with a large powerplant, an aluminum version of the truck V10 was engineered and built by Lamborghini, which had been purchased by Chrysler at the time. Thus the Viper V10 engine was born.