Chrysler Once Proposed Using DC-10s To Deliver Their Dodge Colt Cars

Avgeeks are familiar with cargo aircraft and airlines, from UPS and FedEx, which carry a variety of packages and freight, to outside providers such as Volga-Dnepr, which specialize in outsize freight that won’t fit on typical aircraft freighters (think oversized vehicles, aircraft/spacecraft engines, mining equipment). However, in 1978, McDonnell Douglas proposed their DC-10 aircraft as an airborne car transport for Detroit, specifically Chrysler.

Deliver Fuel-Efficient Cars Faster

Light vehicle sales (think compact cars) were on the rise, and specifically with Chrysler’s vehicle lineup, McDonnell Douglas, in cooperation with Zantop International Airlines, pitched the DC-10 as the ultimate and fastest way to move vehicles between the coasts. 

Founded in 1946 as an airborne freight operator for the auto industry, Zantop Air Transport operated a number of Curtiss C-46 aircraft after the war to transport parts and materials for the Detroit auto makers.  It sold the operation in 1967, but after the new venture went bankrupt a few years later, the Zantop family restarted the airline as Zantop International Airlines, based in Detroit, Michigan.   Zantop operated a fleet of Douglas freighter aircraft from the DC-6 to the DC-8, carrying freight not just for the auto makers, but also for other businesses.

Speedy Delivery For the Dodge Colt

Chrysler fits into this picture with Dodge, which sold vehicles considered ‘mid-range’ priced cars. The Dodge Colt was marketed under the Dodge name from 1971 to 1994, but it was not an American-built vehicle. 

It was a subcompact car manufactured by Mitsubishi Motors in Japan. The vehicles were built in southern Japan (Okayama, to be exact) for Dodge. They were then loaded onto large ships, which carried the completed vehicles to the west coast of the United States (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle). From there, the cars were transported to key points in the U.S. for distribution to car dealers. 

In Hamtramck, Michigan, just outside of the major city of Detroit, Chrysler/Dodge was manufacturing the Dodge Aspen (also branded as Plymouth Volare), another compact vehicle (albeit larger than the Dodge Colt).  

Burn Some Dinosaurs, Save A Week

McDonnell Douglas cleverly put together a proposal to use the DC-10 to speed up transporting vehicles between coasts for distribution. On the outbound flight from Detroit, Michigan, the DC-10 would be loaded with 23 Dodge Aspens plus 37,000 pounds of auto parts (for repair) and head to one of three ports (Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles). On the return trip, it would carry 51 Dodge Colts and 7,200 pounds worth of parts. 

This would save nearly 7 to 10 days from the arrival at the port until cars were transported, but Chrysler-Zantop would need to run two DC-10s with two flights a day each to cover shipping all the inbound cars (assuming they’d want to airlift the nearly 5,400 vehicles inbound each month). The turnaround time was listed as 78 minutes (around 50 minutes to unload/refuel, and 20 minutes to reload and push back).

McDonnell Douglas offered two DC-10-30 aircraft: the Convertible Freighter, which could be reconfigured to a passenger configuration, and a standard freighter. Zantop could run the Convertible Freighter in passenger configuration for their other business when car transport wasn’t needed. 

They showed an all-economy passenger configuration with 345 seats at nine-abreast, with varying 33, 32, and 31-inch pitch setups.  Alternatively, the DC-10 could be equipped to carry 22 large cargo pallets or 30 smaller cargo pallets.

Colts Were In Demand, But It Was Still A Crazy Idea

It may seem ludicrous to transport compact cars via air, but because of the oil embargo only a few years earlier, gas prices were still on the rise, as was the demand for fuel-efficient cars, such as Dodge Colts. 

To load them up and transport them via air transport didn’t make sense, and that’s why this was nothing more than wishful thinking on McDonnell Douglas’s side. The expense of a widebody aircraft, not to mention the crews and maintenance, never mind the fuel cost, makes a proposal like this a non-starter.