I generally agree with you, but according to the guy I know who worked
for Chrysler at this time, 1968 was considered a HIGH POINT for
quality. They were considered very good cars. 1969 was considered a
low point. He said many of the problems were fixed by the dealer
before the car got into the customer's hands-- like emblems falling
off, etc. But some of these things were not discovered until after the
customer took delivery. Then they would bring the car back to the
dealer and it was the dealer's obligation to fix these things gratis--
free-- for the customer. Chrysler kept track of these fixes,
asccording to my source, and there were substantially more fixes on the
69's than the 68's.
I have experienced the leaky trunk thing firsthand on my '71 and it was
a devil of a problem tracking it down. Also, if you look at the
"Popular Mechanics" roadtest that was done of the 69's you see that a
lot of folks were complaining about leaky trunks at the time. Too many
for it to be a myth.
Of course, that doesn't change my opinion. I still love 'em.
MM
On Saturday, January 24, 2004, at 11:16 AM, RandalPark@xxxxxxx wrote:
> This is so subjective. We can probably all sit here and come up with
> examples of problems with a 1968 or 1969 Imperial all day long. The
> fact is that this can be done about any other car as well, including
> our older Imperials. They were cars, for heavens sake.
>
> Frankly, I find it difficult to believe that if someone bought a new
> Imperial that they would even drive it home if they hated the paint
> job. This leaky trunk thing is utterly amazing. That problem was not
> unique to any one particular year or style of car, let alone the
> Imperial.
>
> I wasn't there so I can't verify the story, but an old friend of mine
> who had a wonderful collection of old cars had bought a new Imperial
> every few years from 1956 up. When I met him in 1973 he had a
> collection of old cars, but his everyday car was not an Imperial. His
> story was that he had bought a brand new '66 and because it had a
> leaky trunk, and they could NEVER fix it, he sold it very soon after.
> He swore that those cars weren't any good from the factory. As a
> matter of fact, he didn't like the '67 or '68 models either.
>
> I guess my point is that if quality control problems killed the
> Imperial, one certainly didn't have to wait until '67 and '68 (or '69)
> to find them. I still stand by my original statement that they were
> very good cars. I think that earlier Imperials were very good cars,
> too, but they were not without their share of problems, and certainly
> no less so than others.
>
> Paul
>
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