Thanks for your review, Mike. I enjoyed it.

+1. I flashed between visuals of Sonny & Stringer Bell.

Johnster: “The ‘57 through ‘66 Imperials that had their own unique chassis must have had something going for them because for many years they were banned from competing in demolition derbies. I guess they were so well-built that they could were not significantly damaged by other cars, yet they could inflict a lot of damage to the competition.”

A fascinating bit of trivia and, evidently, quite true. Up thru 1966, while the rest of Chrysler’s autos had been switched over to unibody construction, the Imperial got to retain its full perimeter frame with cross members forming a large ‘x’ in the middle. I guess this was the primary reason they were nearly impossible to kill of in the derbys and why they were ultimately banned.

The only problem with those old cars and their stout body-on-frame construction is that with the lack of modern crumple zones that unibody construction affords, the shock of any impact is not absorbed but transmitted straight into the passenger compartment to the occupants. IOW, the cars would survive low speed impacts relatively unscathed, but the passengers might not.

On an unrelated note, as someone else mentioned Mr. Drysdale’s LeBaron from The Beverly Hillbillies, does anyone remember the car known as The Black Beauty that the Green Hornet was chauffered around in by a young Bruce Lee as Kato in the television series? Now that was a cool 1966 Imperial.

The best cars my parents had back in the 60’s were the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Belvedere convertible- and he used to be a Ford guy.

One of my buddies had one and due to a late night encounter with the Highway Patrol his DL was suspended, shredded and incinerated. Result being I spent a lot of time behind the wheel of this tank.

Used to make it from San Jose to where I lived in the Central Valley going through two towns and one small city in about 20 minutes more than the same trip takes me now 100% on freeways.

Amazing how much ground you can cover at 110mph or so.

If that is true, then it was NOT the original drivetrain. ALL Imperials at that time came with a 440 4-bbl, and Chrysler never put a 2-bbl intake manifold on the 440 either.*

* I think there were some earlier 413 and 383 “RB” engines that came with a 2-bbl carb. Those rare intakes are the only ones available that would allow one to mount a 2-bbl onto a 440.

Maybe this is indicative of nothing in particular, but I don’t recall ever hearing of any other makes of cars being banned.

The car (similar to the 4 door sedan Imperial above) had a 383 and was HUGE, comfortable, but could only get about 16 mpg (maybe 13 in town, no more than 18 on the highway at 55mph).

It had so much character, we came to call it “Martha”. Traded it off in 1982, more fool me, and in fact still saw it driving around the area as late as 5-6 years ago! In daily use!

Should have kept it.

http://rde.me/BO

http://rde.me/BP

I also remember the interior was very much prior to the “plastic” era. Real metal door pulls. A metal door covered with real wood veneer that would close over the radio. A floor-mounted pushbutton that could be used to tune the radio. A full set of gauges with sort of a master-idiot-light that would warn you if any gauge was not normal.

Even though it was diminished by previous Imperial standards – still a special large car. It was Haze Green Metallic with a green cloth interior.

The build quality of the full-size cars really fell off with the 1969 fuselage models.

Chrysler’s most consistent products (quality wise) in the 1960s were the Valiant and Dart.

And the Imperial was a depreciation queen in the 1960s. Chrysler was charging Cadillac prices for the Imperial, but the public didn’t view it as being equal to a Cadillac…or even a Lincoln Continental.

A 1960s Imperial was a better value as a used car.

David Holzman: “The only thing that I think you got wrong had to do with quality: Chrysler Corp in those days was far more reliable than GM or Ford,”

Not exactly. While Mopar drivetrains were bullet-proof in comparison, the body integrity wasn’t nearly as good and had an alarming tendancy to deteriorate much faster than the competition, particularly in the rust-belt.

Ironically, LeBaron started out as a model of Imperial. The one pictured is a Sedan, however, not a LeBaron. It’s shameful that the Imperial and LeBaron (and Chrysler New Yorker, for that matter) names all later wound-up on K-car variants.

@fortitude: The Time article that you pointed to is for a 1971 Imperial. Chrysler products didn’t adopt the “fuselage” styling til 1969, which is also when quality started to suffer. The ‘67 looks much better, in my unabashedly biased opinion. Actually I prefer the pre-67 Imps even more.

Regarding quality of Chrysler in the mid-60s, I think some commenters have it confused with Chrysler quality in the mid 1950’s or the 1970’s. Imperials were advertised as “the world’s most carefully built car”. The lower half of the body was also galvanized to resist corrosion.

@Robert Schwartz: After Imperial went unibody in ‘67, they were based on the Chrysler C-body fullsize platform. You could put all your hitmen in the back seat and pile all the bodies in the trunk of an Imperial. The Cadillac Eldorado was strictly a 2-door coupe based on the Oldsmobile Toronado. Those were considered “personal luxury cars”, along with the Thunderbird, Riviera and Avanti to name a few.

Imperials had their moments design-wise, but all in all Chrysler overreached by trying to compete directly against Cadillac and Lincoln. They would have been much better off trying something different, e.g., the T-Bird of that era handily outsold the Imperial despite its then-premium price.

Ford learned a similar lesson with the Edsel. Despite spending an extraordinary amount of money to launch what was supposed to be a full-line brand, the new four-seater T-Bird actually gave the Edsel a run for its money sales-wise in 1958-59.

The T-Bird was one of the first post-war American cars to show the potential of pioneering new market niches rather than playing follow the leader. Alas, Chrysler was so consumed with GM envy that it didn’t attempt to pioneer new markets of its own until the 1980s, when the minivan was launched.