a dual cowl phaeton, a body style that had disappeared from the scene at Chrysler after 1933.
For the dual cowl’s last dancer, designer Ralph Roberts, of LeBaron, combined the old-fashioned body style with exotic baroque curves inspired by aircraft design, including flowing envelope fenders, a fully disappearing fabric top, and headlights that disappeared behind flush-fitting retractable covers.
Even the rear cowl was electronically raised and lowered, to ease passenger entry and exit.
5 were built for the show car circuit, and all 5 have survived roughly 80 years of museums and galleries, but this was the only one with fixed headlights
Newport was, up to that time, the only non-production automobile to have ever paced at Indianapolis.
It would continue to hold that honor until the Dodge Viper prototype ran in 1989, and it remains the last custom-bodied automobile to have paced Indianapolis.
the Pacemaker Newport passed into the hands of Walter P. Chrysler Jr., son of the company’s late founder and namesake, president of the family’s landmark New York skyscraper, who had it repainted light green and used it while vacationing on Cape Cod.
More than just a well-connected relative, he was perhaps the only man for whom a “daily driver” Newport would make perfect sense.
The car was eventually traded into a Chevrolet dealer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, probably by the second owner. It was stored by the next owner in his barn for 30 years, before being sold in 1989 to the Pascuccis, noted collectors who returned the car to the enthusiast community after decades of hiding.
http://clasp42.rssing.com/browser.php?indx=14584416&item=323
Chrysler's last dual cowl was 1931. 1932-33 had dual windshield but not dual cowl.
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