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Carroll Shelby and Steve McQueen Owned This 1935 Chrysler Imperial Airflow C2

Carroll Shelby is a legend of the automotive world, a Texas-born chicken farmer that went beyond his racer and modder personas with acts of philanthropy. Then there’s Steve McQueen, the undisputed King of Cool that’s way more than the role he played in Bullitt and the racing-themed Le Mans.
1935 Chrysler Imperial Airflow C2 sedan owned by Carroll Shelby and Steve McQueen 9 photos
Photo: Bring a Trailer
In addition to their nationality and passion for all things with four wheels, Carroll and Steve also shared this fellow here. The 1934 Chrysler Imperial ushered in the Airflow design language, the first full-size American automobile to feature streamlining but a commercial failure nonetheless.

Fewer than 30,000 units were built at the Highland Park assembly plant in Michigan with two- and four-door bodies, and the 1935 here is one of the best-preserved examples of the breed. The 1935 features a different grille over the 1934, and 1935 production is estimated at under 8,000 cars.

As it’s the case with every Imperial from that era, a manual transmission is connected to a straight-eight engine instead of the V8 that was popularized by Ford with the Flathead series. Chassis number 7014765 features a three-speed stick shift and a 323.5-cu.in. motor, translating to about 5.3 liters.

Listed on Bring a Trailer with five days to go, the 1935 Chrysler Imperial Airflow C2 Sedan currently sits at $29,000 with 59,000 miles (94,950 kilometers) on the odometer.

Finished in Envoy Red and gifted with a Tan Mohair cloth interior, the car used to be owned by McQueen in the 1970s and Shelby in the 2000s. Acquired from Carroll’s estate in 2018, the interwar luxobarge reportedly got a resurfaced replacement cylinder head and new spark plugs that year.

Offered by a dealership in Missouri, the aero-conscious sedan with suicide doors is joined by “a Chrysler instruction book, a catalog from the McQueen estate auction, a Shelby Vehicle Authenticity Certificate, California registration and insurance cards in Carroll Shelby’s name, and a clean California title in the name of the Carroll Hall Shelby Trust.” Yup, this is a unicorn.

And like every other unicorn, there’s a quirk that needs to be mentioned. Though the five-digit odometer works fine, the 120-mph speedometer is currently inoperable. Rated from the factory at 130 ponies or so, 120 miles per hour (193 km/h) seems like an overestimate to say the least.

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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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