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I would like to respectfully disagree with some of my fellow Imperial owners about the 1957 models. Although I was only 15 years old, I can remember my father's fingers bleeding from trying to seal the windshields of those cars. Chrysler's fix was to stuff Venetian blind cord under the bottom of the windshield and then squirt liquid rubber sealer. The windshields were not big enough to fit the opening and normal sealer would break when you would go over a rough road and the windshield would jump up and down. That was an engineering and design problem, not assembly.
The second poor design was the air conditioning. The glass area of a 57 Imperial was much greater than a 56 Imperial. In the summer, the greenhouse effect would overpower the A/C capacity. Evidently they used the same system as the 56. We had a name for it: warm air conditioning. I remember we took a vacation through Arizona in August of 1956 in a 56 NY. The air conditioning was so cold in the back seat that my mother had to wear a sweater. When we stopped for fuel, the attendant looked in and saw her with her sweater and just shook his head. He was suffering with 120 degree heat.
But we did sell a lot of them. I drove a lesser 1957 MoPar in college and then drove it to Detroit where I got my first job-with Chrysler in CenterLine. The only trouble I ever had was the hood flew up on the Southfield Freeway.
Bottom line-a manufacture's reputation for quality lasts a long time. Why do you think Chrysler was the first with a 5 year-50,000 mile warranty? Even today they are the only one of the Big 3 with a 7-70.
Rollin Bard 66 LeBaron 00 Town and Country 04 Concorde Limited |
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