Quality of the 1957 Imperial

["John Harvey" <50scars@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quality on all 57 models was not very good, even by 1957 standards.  It is claimed that the reason 57 Chrysler products were so bad is that they rushed them into production a year before they originally planned (the 55-56 were only a 2 year cycle, instead of the common 3 years)   because of what Ford did with their styling for 57.  Believe me, Ford had real quality problems of their own in 57.  Buick produced a whole bunch more cars than the factory was designed to build, and quality on 57 Buicks supposedly really suffered.  Chrysler pulled a trick in 56 on their suppliers that resulted in them in effect borrowing, interest free, several hundred million dollars from these suppliers for about a year.  As a result, Chrysler had to find new suppliers, because the old ones refused to sell to them, except cash out front. My dad was one of these suppliers.  He made washers, shims, and spacers. That didn't help quality in 57 for Chrysler, either.

     Another problem was that they really didn't understand how to design to fight the tinworm. 

     My suspicion is that the surviving cars we have now were the "good" cars.  The ones that needed a repair just now and then, but were otherwise pretty dependable.  People who had "lemons", dumped them quickly, and these quickly went down the value line and suffered a life ending repair early (cars depreciated really fast back then, a typical new car lost 1/4 of its value just driving out of the dealership, and by the time it was 2 years old, it had to be really nice to be worth 1/3 the original price.  By the time it was 5, you would be lucky to get 10% of original cost on trade). You had to put some real money out front to finance a new car;  none of this 0-0-0 stuff we have now.   People weren't "upside down" in their cars, like is real common with the real low down payments, and 60 or 72 month payment books of today.  Goes to show you how much cars have improved over the last 40 years--that someone will loan money on one for 5 or 6 years.  Back in 57, 24 or 30 month contracts were just about as long as they would go.  Maybe 36.