Bill,
The ease with which you state facts about these cars is nothing short of
amazing. I commend your detailed knowledge of the industry at that time. It was
only in recent years that I came to understand what a disaster the '57 GM cars
were.
You know, there is certainly no debating that the '57 Chrysler cars were poorly
assembled, but it is seldom mentioned in the same discussion that although a
nice design, the '57 Ford was one of the worst put together cars ever made. As
you point out, the '57 Buick was TERRIBLE. I always thought that they were
pretty cars, but they were notorious for their poor quality.
I think that the Chrysler line attracted more bad press about the poor quality
simply because they were so far ahead of everyone else that year. Their cars
made big headlines, but as with anything else, if you toot your horn loud
enough, you better make sure that your closet is clean.
Chrysler won lots of awards that year, but when the public gets burned, they
don't forget. Luxury car buyers who "tried" Imperial in '57 because of its good
looks and innovative features would have felt like they had made a mistake when
the trouble began. The company never fully recovered from that experience.
Paul
In a message dated 11/11/2003 1:20:12 PM Eastern Standard Time,
wwatson@xxxxxxxxx writes:
>
>
>
> 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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