Chalmers Six-30 History

The Six-30 — built on the Model 35 series and sold through several lettered revisions — was the car most associated with Chalmers' later years. A lower-priced six aimed at high volume, it arrived as the company reached its sales peak: Chalmers' best year was 1916, when dealers took on more cars than they could sell, an over-shipment that contributed to the slump that followed.

From around 1917–1918 the Six-30 adopted Chalmers' 'Hot Spot' and 'Ram's Horn' intake arrangement, which warmed the fuel-air mixture to improve running and economy — a genuine engineering talking point of the late brass-into-nickel era. Later cars could be had with four-wheel hydraulic brakes, an advanced feature for the time.

The Six-30 lineage carried Chalmers to the end. After the 1917 alliance with Maxwell, falling output (reportedly around 20 cars a day by 1921 against Maxwell's 100-plus) sealed the marque's fate. Maxwell bought the Chalmers property in December 1922, the final Chalmers cars — including the 1923 Model 'Y' — were built in 1923, and the business was folded into the reorganization that became the Chrysler Corporation.