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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 504
| I attended the St John Concour Show...great collection of Fw Lookers including an Exner display. Here is one of my favorites...
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 504
| Not a Forward Looker but awesome...La Contesse show car
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 504
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 504
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| A spring special car as well. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 363
| Any more pics of the Contesse??  |
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Location: The Mile High City | Oh, that Custom Royal is nice!  [drool]
I like the la Comtesse too, it was the subject of a concept car thread and National De Soto Club article, but it sure was from the dowdy days in Chrysler! There is no hiding it! |
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Expert
Posts: 2996
Location: Sept. 1958 | Thanks for the photos. I saw the CRL in the flesh in 2011 at Hershey. Beautiful car with a Tom White restoration!!! Love to see it again someday! |
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Expert
Posts: 2308
Location: The Bat Cave, Fairborn, OH | Where was this show held, sir? I saw the La Contesse Chrysler in the Walter P. Chrysler Museum on the 11th of July and I was not aware that it was operational. It seems though that it is taken to shows from time to time. Here are the photos I took of this beautiful car. I don't know if you can see it in the one interior shot I managed to take, but the roof appears to have a glass panel in the center that one can see out of somewhat like the skyliner glass panel that Ford had in their 1954-55 cars.
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1954 Chrysler La Contesse-6.jpg (190KB - 70 downloads)
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 504
| It was held at St Johns Inn in Plymouth Michigan last Sunday. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 390
| The roof insert on the La Comtesse is immense and perfectly clear. Even with the car parked under the shade of a tree at the Concours, it was easy to tell that it was VERY warm inside that car.
This was my first `in-person' opportunity to see this car. I've seen b&w photos of it for years. Yes, it's pre-Forward Look, but for what it is, it's a very impressive car.
The St.John's Concours was an Exner feast of epic dimensions. One class in particular consisted of one Imperial convertible from 1957 through 1961 lined up chronologically. It was an absolutely magnificent sight.
In addition to all of the cars in the class where that '58 Custom Royal was displayed, there were TWO Sweptsides (One Dodge, one Fargo) in an all truck category.
And then there was the Diablo parked tail to tail with the XNR...........
I seriously filled the memory card in my camera!
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 663
Location: Oakley, Ill | I fail to understand why we refer to Pre-forward look cars as "dowdy". Compare the competition to Chrysler products and there is really not much difference in"flash". GM put a little zip into the Oldsmobile Starfires in 1954, and also with the Buick Wildcat, but as far as brightwork, and general shape of the cars, Chrysler was right there with the competition. By 53, Chrysler had them on performance, too, except for maybe Olds 88. Hudson was kind of hot with its Twin H power, but that was a flathead 6, and it was not so much that the car was fast, but that it handled better. Chrysler's hemi starting in 51 was force to be reckoned with. They got it down into Dodge and DeSoto by 53, beating the heck out of Ford and Mercury who still had flathead V-8s. The
Studebaker Starlite coupes were neat, but the rest of the Studebaker line was lackluster. Nash was just funny looking. Hudson was still pushing a car that first saw light of day in 1948.
Compare cars model for model, and you will see that there really is nothing any more dowdy about Chrysler's cars than the competition. |
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Expert
Posts: 2308
Location: The Bat Cave, Fairborn, OH | kmccabe56 - 2014-07-30 7:09 PM The roof insert on the La Comtesse is immense and perfectly clear. Even with the car parked under the shade of a tree at the Concours, it was easy to tell that it was VERY warm inside that car. This was my first `in-person' opportunity to see this car. I've seen b&w photos of it for years. Yes, it's pre-Forward Look, but for what it is, it's a very impressive car. The St.John's Concours was an Exner feast of epic dimensions. One class in particular consisted of one Imperial convertible from 1957 through 1961 lined up chronologically. It was an absolutely magnificent sight. In addition to all of the cars in the class where that '58 Custom Royal was displayed, there were TWO Sweptsides (One Dodge, one Fargo) in an all truck category. And then there was the Diablo parked tail to tail with the XNR........... I seriously filled the memory card in my camera! The question of heat that the sun could transmit into the c-o-c-kpit of the car was undoubtedly why Ford dropped their Skyliner glass panel too.Even with the optional privacy sreen zipped into the ceiing, that car was HOT.
Edited by 58 DESOTOS RULE 2014-08-01 2:56 PM
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Expert
Posts: 2312
Location: Arizona | I think of the pre-forward look cars as dowdy because you can easily picture your grandmother driving to her sewing circle in them and not appear a bit out of place. That's true of all the makes with rare exception. |
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Exner Expert 19,174 posts. Neil passed away 18 Sep 2015. You will be missed, Neil!
Posts: 19146
Location: bishop, ca | Former company president K.T. Keller insisted that MoPars all have roofs that were tall enough so as to allow a driver to reside while
wearing his hat, and sitting in a proper chair-height seat.
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Expert
Posts: 1819
Location: Vancouver, BC |
Not only did K.T. Keller have minimum standards for the interior, but also the trunk. He apparently had two large milk containers used to ship milk to dairies when he viewed mock ups. Keller would open the trunk, place the two milk containers in the trunk and close the lid. If the lid secured properly, no problem. If the lid did not, the trunk lid had to be raised to make room for the containers. Thus the large trunks on Mopar cars while he was in charge, but those big trunks also raised the height of the car making them look boxy.
And that was the main problem with the 1949-1952 models. They looked boxy and outdated, most years actually looking like they should have been built the previous year. The 1953-54 DeSotos and Chryslers looked good with their lower roof lines, but the 1954 Oldsmobiles, Buicks, and Cadillac had new bodies with wraparound windshields. Thus the one-year old 1954 DeSotos and Chrysler designs were considered old. The smaller 1953 Plymouths (9" shorter than Chev & Ford) and Dodges were stubby looking while the Dodge hardtops and convertibles (11" shorter than Pontiac) were built on Plymouth's 114" wheelbase, 5" shorter than the Dodge sedans. Sales of all 1954 Mopar lines plunged.
Chrysler may have had hemi engines that outperformed the competition, but those boxy cars just did not have the image of power. The V's on the hood just did not eliminate the fact the cars looked like they had flathead engines under the hood. And no automatic transmissions before very late in the 1953 model year. All the competition had automatics by 1951.
The biggest problem with the 1953-54 Studebaker sedans were the hardtops and coupes. Everyone compares the sedans with the hardtops and coupes and not the competitors' sedans. The Studebaker sedans don't do badly against the competition's sedans. Although the 1953 models had not much in the way of chrome trim - a styling theme a decade too soon.
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Expert
Posts: 2788
Location: USA - KY | 
Thanks for the photos!
Sounds like that Concours show was one great event. Those cars are great!
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58 Custom Royal!
