CNNMoney.com
Companies Economy International Corrections Pre-market Trading After-hours Trading Winners/Losers/Actives Bonds Currencies Commodities World Markets Money Magazine Real Estate Taxes Jobs Ask the Expert Money 101 Autos Mutual Funds The Help Desk Loan Center Best Places to Live Ask the Expert Ultimate Guide to Retirement Retirement Calculators Rules of Retirement Best Funds Best Places to Retire Fortune Brainstorm Tech Apple 2.0 Blog Big Tech Blog Sectors and Stocks Tech Talk Resource Guide Small Business Makeovers Questions & Answers Small Business Video 100 Best Places to Launch FSB 100 Fortune Small Business Fortune 500 Brainstorm Tech Investing Management C-Suite Rankings Main Create Portfolio Edit Portfolio Create Alerts Edit Alerts

Curves of steel: Sleek, slick and aerodynamic

Phoenix Art Museum's exhibit explores the influence of streamlining and aerodynamics on car design throughout the 20th century. Exhibit to run April 1 to June 3, 2007.

1934 Chrysler Airflow Imperial
1934 Chrysler Airflow Imperial
The Chrysler Airflow was a car that was genuinely ahead of its time. In fact, competitor General Motors attacked the streamlined car on that very basis, calling the Airflow "ill-timed" and "dubious" compared to GM's more conservative products.

The Airflow was the first American production car to be designed with the benefit of actual windtunnel testing, something that was done on the advice of Orville Wright.

Despite its advanced design - and ride and handling qualities far superior to other cars of the day - the Airflow sold poorly. Early quality problems take some of the blame but the car's odd appearance, especially for the 1930s, probably did more than anything to keep buyers away.


Oldsmobile

SoCal

Tatra

Chrysler

Talbot-Lago

Lincoln

Dubonnet

Delahaye

Cord

Stout

Chrysler
High-dollar green cars The luxury magazine Robb Report devotes a special issue to extreme green cars of all types. (more)
'World's most valuable car' fails to sell Following postponement to research its background, Hitler-era German race car finds no buyer. (more)
Road to the driverless car As computers and sensors become smaller and more sophisticated, cars are handling more of the tricky and boring work of driving a car. Someday, they could handle virtually all of it. (more)
© 2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Privacy Policy. Advertising Practices.
Copyright © 2009 BigCharts.com Inc. All rights reserved. Please see our Terms of Use.
MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc.
Intraday data provided by Interactive Data Real-Time Services and subject to the Terms of Use.
Intraday data is at least 20-minutes delayed. All times are ET.
Historical, current end-of-day data, and splits data provided by Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data.
Fundamental data provided by Morningstar, Inc..
SEC Filings data provided by Edgar Online Inc..
Earnings data provided by FactSet CallStreet, LLC.