I keep scoring big at my favorite local garage… I noticed this 1968 Imperial convertible when I had some work done on my beater farm truck last week. The shop did a lot of the restoration work, and the car was in for a little touch-up as the owner now has it on the market.
JCP already did a CC on the ’68 Imperial, so I won’t plow that ground again. Instead, I’d like to highlight that the designer of this car, Elwood Engel – who was hired away from Ford in 1961, was also the man responsible for the ’61 Lincoln Continental. And from certain angles (in my opinion), there’s more than a passing resemblance between the design themes.
Only 474 copies were made of the convertible, and I echo JCP’s comment that this may be one of the rarest cars covered here at CC. Finding one smack dab in the middle of corn country makes it even more unique.
Where modern cars try to create cocoons around each occupant, the Imperial instead brings to mind a line from Bruce McCall’s Zany Afternoons about the dash being a ‘solid wall of chrome.’
It’s obvious that the design theme, both inside and out, is long, parallel horizontal lines. It’s a clean, crisp look that comes off looking very elegant. In fact, the only real complaints Imperial owners had were related to poor workmanship – feature-wise, it seems to have hit the mark squarely.
Notice the “turbine” treatment on the wheel covers? It’s the same linear theme, repeated radially.
The ’67 Imperial was the first year for unit body construction, and was based on the slightly shorter C Body. Styling themes were largely unchanged from the former ‘body on frame’ D Body models, which were so strong that they were eventually banned from demolition derbies because they were too hard to knock out!
The ’67-68 Imperials also lost the spare tire bump on the trunk, which helped move it away from the Continental design-wise. Personally, I think it really cleans up the rear styling.
Again, keep in mind that some drafting board jockey was tasked with designing each of the elements you see here: the side marker lamp, rub strip and bumper “wings” treatment.
This particular car has 57K miles on it, and the owner is asking $9,800, which is a steal compared to some of the prices I saw researching online. This car cost $6,522 when new ($40,412 in 2010 dollars).
My wife and I are planning a road trip out west later this year, and just for a very brief moment, I thought “this would sure make a neat road trip car.” Thankfully, reality quickly set in.
Beautiful car Ed – I love these old Imperials. I’m having trouble deciding which one I like best – the black one you found or the Turbine Bronze one Jim ran across.
Two down, 472 to go!
Nice car but I see it has the standard non-adjustable steering column. Most buyers optioned for the Tilt-A-Scope wheel which tilted and telescoped.
The optional tilt-o-scope column was actually bought from GM (Delco). This Imperial also does not have power “wing windows” which was another option, but it DOES have the optional Budd power front disc brakes. I can just make out the “POWER DISC BRAKES” script in the middle of the brake pedal.
I believe that disc brakes were standard on the Imperial, beginning in 1967.
According to the information at imperialclub.com you are correct, front discs were standard on Imperials starting in 1967. They were optional on Chryslers.
I recognized that door handle in the clue immediately. This car looks really good in black, but like Tom, it makes for a nasty choice between this and the Turbine Bronze. Congratulations on the rare find. Welcome to my exclusive CC club.
It seems that every time we get a look at a Chrysler product built after 1955 or so there is a comment about poor workmanship, poor build quality, assembly issues, etc. I would think that a company that had superb engineering as Chrysler did would have been able to address this issue better. They plainly had cost and profit pressure to deal with but still…. Does anyone really understand what was going on?
BTW Sure is a beautiful car. Hope someone who appreciates it winds up with it.
Short answer: Bean counters.
The phrase used today is “cost reduction.”
From what I have read, at the time Iacocca came into the company, the organizational chart was completely screwed up and had been for a long time. Engineering had been such a power center and everything was set up to communicate up and down the chain of command, but nobody communicated with any other department. When engineering would design a part or an assembly, there was no interaction with manufacturing or purchasing or anybody else. Each assignment would be completed and then tossed over the fence for someone else to worry about.
Walter Chrysler and K.T. Keller had been strong enough managers that they could make the system work, but as the products got more complex, the management quality declined a lot. Costs ran out of control, parts were designed with no regard for how easy or hard they might be for some Joe on the factory floor to actually put them in. Add to the fact the Lynn Townsend focused on volume almost to the exclusion of every other metric. At the end of the month, everything parked along the side of the line because it needed extra attention got shipped anyway because sales needed the numbers.
The management of the company was a complete steaming mess by the 1970s, with co-chairmen John Riccardo and Gene Cafiero who couldn’t stand each other. It is amazing that some of the cars turned out as well as they did.
But didn’t Chrysler quality improve briefly – from about 1962 through 1965? In the old Popular Mechanics “Owners’ Reports” from this period, Chrysler vehicles actually scored very well in terms of complaints about workmanship – better than the offerings from the “Big Two”. The real slide seems to have occurred in 1966.
From what I’ve read, Townsend was well aware of the lousy quality reputation that the corporation had earned beginning in 1957, and was determined to do something about it. He initially did…but then he must have slacked off when sales boomed in the mid-1960s.
Storing unsold cars in the notorious Sales Bank didn’t help matters any. They sat outside for weeks, and were finally shipped after dealers agreed to take them – generally after a great deal of pleading and subtle threats from corporate headquarters.
1962-65 also saw the easy gains in volume from the awful 1960-61 period. The problem came when the economy and car sales started to cool off after 1965′s record-setting year. The volume that Townsend prized above all else became harder to sustain. I am sure that there was some significant cost cuts in this period that started showing up in the 69 big cars and everything after. Plus, the pressure to ship anything and everything regardless of readiness was huge. I have read that sales guys would rent hotel rooms at the end of every month and run a boiler room-style operation to hard-sell dealers into taking more cars. Dealers learned how to play the game and would demand concessions and premiums and the sales guys would deliver. I forget when the sales bank came into play, but it was abused as well, and by 1979 there were unsold new cars stashed all over the Detroit area, many with flat tires, dead batteries and vandalism damage. No way to run a car company.
Because of the “Lincoln resemblance” I always thought that this car cried out for a 4 door convertible as well.
Beautiful old heap! That just has to be the flattest dashboard I have ever seen, reminds me of our 1981 Reliant.
When I saw the featured car, I was hoping it was the model with the space-ship “Forbidden Planet” instrument cluster/dash, but obviously not.
I certainly would appreciate a ride in that car…
You’re thinking of the 1960-62 Chrysler “Astra-dome” dashboard with electro-luminescent lighting. The 1965-66 Chryslers tried to duplicate the look without the complexity. 1967 Chryslers, and Imperial since it now shared a lot of C-body components, adopted the rather flat dashboard seen here. At the time, the core of this dashboard was the largest single cast pot-metal part ever made.
New passenger safety regs came into force for 1967, which meant that there couldn’t be anything protruding that would impale occupants in a crash. 1967 also saw the introduction of collapsible steering columns.
wow!
With Lincoln dropping their convertible after the 1967 run, you’d think Imperial would have sold more than 474 units! Still a very nice car for those lucky enough to get one.
“My wife and I are planning a road trip out west later this year, and just for a very brief moment, I thought “this would sure make a neat road trip car.” Thankfully, reality quickly set in.”
Screw reality! I think you should reconsider
Wow! $ 9,800. If I had somewhere to keep it! Even needing interior work, that car should sell easily. A great car!
When you said how few of these were made, I was sure expecting a higher price than that.
I learned how to drive in a ’67 Newport and I must confess there’s an awful lot in common between the cars (though the Newport/New Yorker/300 actually had concave sides). Don’t know if the concave contour was the reason, but we used to joke that the car could deposit the contents of the smallest puddle onto the windshield.
What a find. I think I prefer the 64-66 cars on the outside, but I love the sweeping Danish modern-ish dashboard on the 67-68 cars.
Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.:
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/fender-blades-on-a-fuselage-the-design-of-the-1973-imperial-by-chrysler/
Per the build quality comments, I believe that all Imperials of this era were built in the Jefferson Avenue plant in downtown Detroit. This was a factory that predated the whole damn company, having started building Maxwells before the world war…the first one, that is.
Great road trip car…if you own a chain of gas stations!
Great looking 68′Imperial Convertible, triple balck is very nice.
I own one of these beautys too, my 68′ Convertible is gold with black top
and black seats.
Very nice! That leaves 471 to go, Tom…
A beautiful car, T.E. Are we here at CC becoming the mecca for 68 Imp ragtops or what?
When I was a kid an elderly neighbor had a 67 or 68 Crown Coupe that was the same color as yours, only with gold leather interior. I should have tried harder to buy it after the old guy died. His wife kept their other car – a green 72 Imperial LeBaron 4 door.
@ jpcavanaugh:
Do you know anything more about the green 72 Imperial LeBaron 4 door???
Sorry, but that was back in the late 70s. The old lady lived on the street behind my Mom. I think that she died or went to a nursing home during the years I was in college, and I have no idea whatever happened to that one.
For some reason, these old sixties/seventies Imperials (especially the black ones) remind me of the old Mission: Impossible tv show. Seems like there was always an Imperial in every other episode.
The Name of the Game was another Mopar oriented show, that Dave Grusin theme music was the bomb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-xExiIxS48
There were a lot of Imperials in Get Smart too, usually driving the Chief around.
Beautiful car (& the gold one too). I’m surprised these didn’t have hidden headlights though. Weren’t the rear turn signals sequential on these?
No sequential turn signals.
I think the only Imperial with sequential turn signals is the 69′ Imperial.
That production figure is pretty anemic, but wasn’t really all that worse than what Imperial normally did. Convertible production for them in a typical year up to this point was only in the 500s or 600s. It wasn’t even the worst year the Imperial convertible had ever had; just 429 were built in 1961, during a severe recession.
Out of the 12 years Imperials were available as convertibles (1957-68), they only exceeded 1000 once, which was in 1957. That year’s total obviously benefitted the significant push Chrysler placed behind Imperial in the mid-to-late ’50s, as well as the across-the-board success of Chrysler’s 1957 Forward Look models. Imperial really only even came close to 1000 one other time, which was in 1964, when 922 were built.
In hindsight, it’s kind of remarkable that Chrysler kept building Imperial convertibles for as long as they did. Dropping them after ’68 was probably based on a combination of 1) Chrylser deciding that they could no longer afford to put the amount of resources into Imperial as they had in the past, given its low sales volume in general; and 2) A sense that, all else being equal, future sales prospects for the convertibles were probably significantly worse than they had been in the past. The T-Bird and Lincoln ragtops were already gone; within a year or two models that were much more mainstream would start losing theirs.
were is this car and do you have any contact information I would be interested
I saw the car last summer. It was parked at a company called Indy Sound & Performance on E. 82nd Street in Indianapolis. I do not recall if they owned it or if they were displaying it for the owner. A Google search shows a phone number of (317) 288-5995. The car went away sometime late last summer, and I have not seen it anywhere since.
Any chance you could give contact info for the shop it was at or the owner? My dad had one just like that (that’s just too far gone to restore), and I’d be very interested in it.