Jim;
I would hate to contradict you but I don't believe that the styling or
drivability concept had much to do with the lack of sales. On thing that I
have noticed about these cars is that when a substantial change in styling
occurred the sales figures actually shot up. Remember that the most radical
styling departure was in 1957, which was the high water mark in terms of
production. What hurt the marque's reputation in that year is that Chrysler
put too focus on making the cars all new and not enough on build quality as
they had in previous years. Lets face it, if you were looking to buy a $6000
dollar luxury car, in 1958, and you heard about breaking T-bars, body
rattles, and a lack of heat in the rear seat in one make of car, would you
buy one?
The Imperial's main handicap in sales, from day one, was a lack of prestige
from a lack of public recognition. Chrysler never did do a very good job of
overcoming this as Ford did with the Lincoln division. In addition to their
regular production cars Lincoln built a series of high end, low production,
hand built coupes called the,"Continental mark one and two". These cars were
put together using the finest materials and workmanship, and were inspected
in every detail before delivery to the customer. Needless to say these cars
were produced at a loss but it gave the Lincoln a great deal of needed
prestige among the well to do.
Our favourite make, like it or not, never really had an equivalent to the
Continental after the war. True, there were the Ghia limousines but there
never was a personal luxury car along the lines of the Continentals.
Imperial, in spite of this, also never made use of its salon age pedegree or
its reputation for high quality as a former Chrysler model to make up for
it. Instead they started a luxury brand out of the blue with no history or
reputation and, unlike Lincoln, make little real attempt to create one
I don't think, however, that the 300 or 300B would have gone over very well
as an Imperial or could have been marketed like a Continental. The original
300's had little in common in concept with an Imperial other then the grille
and the price. Compared to the Imperials, and other Chrysler products, they
were sports cars. They had a specially built high performance engine, extra
strength crankshaft, lumpy cam, solid lifters, dual four barrel carbs, stiff
suspension, and were virtually devoid of chrome. Because of this they were
much rougher running and much more violent in acceleration, this is not the
sort of car that would have appealed to a tradition luxury car buyer. The
300 in itself was produced to promote Chrysler's performance image and
Chrysler sales, which largely worked at that time.
That being said I have noticed a tendency with the aforementioned
magazine's writers to focus too much on a company's failure in their
summaries, especially with the independent makers. Not once have I read an
artical about Studebaker where they don't remark about it's doom looming
over the horizon even if the the article is about a car they produced
fifteen years previous to that event. What bothers me is that, like the
modern movie reviews, they are more focused on sales reciepts then whether
they produced a good product. They forget that Duesenberg produced some of
the best cars in the world in their day but the company died.
Best Regards
arran Foster
1954 Imperial Newport
Needing A Left Side Taillight Bezel and other trim parts
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