Chrysler's new line of 1957 models put General Motors to shame. Oldsmobile,
Buick and Cadillac used brand new bodies, but as one wag put it, although
Plymouth was "Suddenly It's 1960", Oldsmobile was "Suddenly It's 1950".
Popular Mechanics did an owner's report on a new 1957 Oldsmobile and the
assembly line worker that installed the grille nameplate installed the
letters "O-L-D-D-M-O-B-I-L-E" on the grille.
1957 was a disaster for Buick and Oldsmobile, by the way. Buick model year
production fell from 583,181 in 1955 to 572,024 in 1956 to 405,086 in 1957,
while Oldsmobile dropped from 554,090 in 1955 to 485,459 in 1956 and to
384,392 in 1957. Cadillac production also dropped, but by a much smaller
amount from 154,631 in 1956 (up from 1955's 140,778) to 146,840 in 1957.
As for the borrowed money, Chrysler borrowed $250 million from the
Prudential Insurance Company in 1954. This gave the corporation the
financial foundation to go ahead with the complete retooling needed for the
1957 models, plus plant expansion and modernization. And they had one
hundred years to repay it The money did not come from their suppliers,
although the suppliers generally foor the bill for tooling the parts they
produced. Thus if Chrysler redesigned a part midway through the year a
supplier might be caught footing the bill for tooling a part twice. But
Chrysler did not actually borrow money from them.
Bill
Vancouver, BC
----- Original Message -----
From: John Harvey
To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2003 9:10 AM
Subject: Re: IML: Quality of the 1957 Imperial
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.
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