2. During what years was the Imperial seperate from
Chrysler ?
I recall a respected contributor to the list posted recently that Chrysler
Corporation always kept the brand, Imperial, as an entity of the Chrysler
make. While Chrysler Corp called Imperial a separate division from
1955-1970, for those 16 model years Chrysler never went through the legal
steps of creating a new Imperial division, treating the Imperial brand as a
separate division in name only. There were no independent Imperial
dealerships nor other corporate structurings that is typical of a separate
divisioin. So it could be said that Imperial was called a separate division
from 1955-1970, unless you look at the legal aspect of such a description.
For the 1971 model year, Chrysler dropped the in-name only Imperial Division
and reverted to calling them Chrysler Imperials, badging the trunk lids as
such. I think someone added that some of the later Imperials lacked a
'Chrysler" badge on the body, so the ambiguity continued.
3. Why did Chrysler decide to later combine the
names Chrysler and Imperial.
I've read recently that at the time that the designs for the 1974 C-Body
cars were being presented to management, it was an up or down decision to go
with one last revision of the big body cars. The 1974 designs were never
meant to be facelifted or continued past a reasonable competitive marketing
lifespan. The writing seemed to be on the wall for large displacement
motored cars even before the oil embargo. With this, maybe Chrysler Corp
decided that there wasn't sufficient profit to continue with a top end
division. Federal regulation was quickly relegating the automobile to
appliance stature rather that of a status symbol. The re-engineering
required to compete with independent rear suspensioned and fuel injected
cars from Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar to make a claim for being a luxury car
was something that took Chrysler 30 years and a merger to MB to achieve.
Anyone else have specifics to add?
Eric
'63 Crown Four-Door
'63 Belvedere Four-Door sedan
'72 Newport Custom sedan
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