(first posted 2/1/2013) All my recent talk about Oldsmobiles made me forget that I have another significant family legacy. My Great-Grandmother Clara bought Chrysler New Yorkers exclusively, from her first new-car purchase in 1956 to her last, in 1987. Although I’m feeling like the Dr. Doolittle of the Forward Look, we’ll look at how her loyalty probably had nothing to do with our subject car.
My Great-Grandmother Clara arrived in San Francisco, from Birmingham, in August 1956, along with her second husband and my (maternal) grandmother, then a blossoming teenager. The Conestoga wagon of the trek was a lightly-used 1951 Pontiac Chieftain. For her new life in the glamorous Baghdad By The Bay, though, that old Chieftain Deluxe just wasn’t cutting the mustard.
Despite having made a huge trek from the deep south, somehow and miraculously the family found enough money for a down payment on a 1956 New Yorker four-door sedan–in “Pink and Ecru”, as Clara would tell four-year-old me when we started talking cars some 30 years later.
The family however landed in San Francisco during one of its more modern periods of upheaval. The Fillmore District was being “redeveloped” (a loaded term then, just as it is now); by the fall of 1957, having received their “eminent domain” settlement, they were looking toward suburban environments that would be welcoming to African Americans.
Thus was Clara’s love of new Chrysler New Yorkers put on hold for eight model years: The cost of a mortgage, furnishings and maintenance for a 1,300 sq.ft. suburban home some 30 miles away left little money to indulge in ownership of the rapidly changing Chryslers.
She was tempted by their long, sweeping lines and cathedral tail lamps. She probably wouldn’t have really known or cared for the newly stiffened Torsion-Aire ride, but would have been dazzled by the breathtaking go-power of the upsized 392 Hemi V8, whose class-leading 325 horsepower filtered through the finest-in-the-industry Torqueflite automatic. It surely would have been a thrill to play with on those drives to Salinas to get vegetables for canning.
She would have enjoyed every moment, sliding behind that plastic steering wheel onto the Jacquard- fabric bench seats–at least until the springs started poking out randomly from beneath the cheapened foam padding. And then, the rattles would have developed, along with the possibility of leaks from the windshield and other assorted places.
She probably wouldn’t have suffered the worst faults of the fatal Forward Look: Northern California’s temperate climate would have done wonders to postpone the snapping torsion-bar mounts and notorious rusting. It’s well documented that in terms of quality, the 1957 model year was an unmitigated disaster for Highland Park, and one from which it took years to recover. In fact, some say Chrysler’s reputation never really did recover from it.
I wonder if my Great-Grandmother would have tolerated such flaws in her car. She always believed in buying high-quality things that resulted in less consumption in the long run. Would her loyalties have been shaken? If so, where would she have gone? Oldsmobile and Buick are the most logical alternatives (she openly detested a fellow deaconess at Macedonia Baptist Church who traded for a new Cadillac every two years). Or would she have forgiven the mistakes that Chrysler made in the fury of ’57?
In any case, the 1956 New Yorker was replaced when my Grandmother, now 21 and with two children, needed a car to relocate to Chicago. It was a perfect opportunity to finally splurge a little for a new New Yorker, this time a beige four-door hardtop. By 1964, most of the quality headaches that scared off a host of Mopar faithful (and probably killed DeSoto once and for all) had been sorted out. And frankly, the new Mopars weren’t as…well, weird as the 1961-62 models.
It always fascinates me that consumer loyalty is mostly based upon positive experiences with the product purchased, which explains the my family’s other loyalty for Oldsmobiles: Most of the more questionable Olds moments–from the diesels to the nightmare that the Aurora could be–were avoided. What’s more, my own experience with an Ultradrive-equipped LHS has sworn me off modern Chryslers for life.
Function can follow form only when the function proves useful. It’s a lesson that Chrysler has repeatedly struggled to learn during its history. By circumstance, then, they never lost a lifelong customer. Here’s hoping that in the 21st Century they aren’t relying on such dumb luck.
Chrysler’s Forward Look folly reminds one that not only is beauty merely skin deep–but that often, it covers an internal ugliness that goes straight to the bone.
I take it you mean Birmingham Alabama?
Laurence, I’ve been meaning to post this comment: Along with great writing, GREAT photography on your pieces.
Love how the shots evoke a sort of from the past, faded memory sort of vibe. What really sets them apart is how they remind me of some photos I took in the ’70s, and recently discovered in a box in my garage…the edges had darkened in much the same way.
Mind if I ask if that is a camera technique, or if it’s done through editing?
Although I’ve tried to rely more on time of day, normally the 2-3 hour period before sunset is my favorite time of the day for long shadow contrasts, a bit of the finishing up work is done in Photoshop playing with exposure, clarity and a few filters.
My son has taken some broadcasting and photojournalism classes, and says that that period of time late in the day is called the golden hour. The sun low in the sky accentuates and highlights colors quite a lot.
The Golden Hour really worked well with chrome bumper and other chromey trim cars. The chrome reflects the still fairly bright sky while the car is in lower indirect light.
When I was a kid I had a great-aunt Clara, who was also a Chrysler gal. She and her husband were farmers in Minnesota, and whenever we went out for a visit, there was always a big Chrysler parked outside. I vaguely remember a 60, then a white 63 and a green 68.
Whenever I see one of these 57 models, my head reminds me about all of the problems, but my heart falls in love with the car all over again. When I was in grade school, I used to walk by a house where an old couple lived. Rarely, the garage door would be up and there would be a big black 57 or 58 New Yorker sedan parked there, that was probably 10 or 12 years old by then. I may have actually seen it out on the road once, and it looked to be in beautiful condition.
Out of all of the 1957 Forward Look cars, the New Yorker may have been the most beautiful (as it should have been, I suppose.) If one of these ever were to follow me home, I would love it and take really good care of it. I should also note that your great grandmother’s 56 is also a favorite of mine.
I’m hoping my mother still has the box of the photos of the ’56 and the house. One thing that I didn’t mention is that she had her house in Menlo Park painted Pink & Ecru like the Chrysler, and painted the living room, her bathroom (some had separate beds, my great grandparents had his & her bathrooms) and the bedroom pink. There’s a picture from the January 1962 snow where the Chrysler and my Great Grandfather’s F-100 peak out of the garage as my grandmother mimes throwing a snowball. All of it was still pink until she developed Alzheimers when I was 17.
So that love of the ’56 ran deep enough that it colored quite a few aspects of her life. And it reminds me that cars, of all consumer products, elicit the deepest emotional responses from us. But I still wonder if she would have forgiven a ’57. I just remembered that a ’69 replaced the ’64, and it was quickly replaced with a ’71 because of a myriad of minor issues. So maybe there would have been hope for a ’57 after all.
Your comment reminds me of my own grandmother, who had a pink & white 55 DeSoto that she bought used about 1958. She also loved pink. After my grandfather died, she moved off of the farm into a small house in town with a pink kitchen and pink (plastic) tiles in the single bathroom. She finally traded the DeSoto on a 3 year old 64 Catalina because in her small town, there was no Chrysler dealer, and the Pontiac dealer had taken good care of her car for her. She later traded the 64 on a new 69 Catalina from that same dealer (Davis Pontiac in Paulding, Ohio.)
THIS 57 IS IN GIRARD,OHIO AND HAS NEVER BEEN PAINTED OR RESTORED.
PHOTO 57 CHRYSLER
57 PHOTO
Beautiful!
> She always believed in buying high-quality things that resulted in less consumption in the long run.
Need more people that think like that. The term “consumer grade” seems to be synonymous with “cheap junk” today.
> Or would she have forgiven the mistakes that Chrysler made in the fury of ’57?
The “fury” of ’57? Pun intended? 🙂
My family skirted around all the bad eras of Chryslers when buying cars too. All their 50’s Mopars were 1956 and prior, and the next newer one was my dad’s 1962 Chrysler Saratoga. Through the Brougham era, most held onto their older Mopars. In all cases their next purchase was non-Mopar.
That New Yorker looks great. I wouldn’t be afraid to own a Forward Look car today if it had been cared-for up to this point. Their weak points requiring attention are well-known, and it wouldn’t be driven in harsh weather. However, my garage is full and my wallet is empty already.
The 57 Mopars made the opposition look rather staid.What a pity there were so many problems with them being rushed into production,then I’d probably play safe and go for a Ford or Chevy.
This article reminded me of my aunt buying a 1979 New Yorker. I’m sure just saying “1979 Chrysler product” elicits groans from the audience. Yes, this car was a nightmare for her. I remember it was the most expensive car she had bought to that time ($11,000) and it was a sharp car (white with red leather), but it just didn’t work out. Although I’ve admired Chrysler products since (from an aesthetics point of view), I have never and will never purchase one; I just can’t.
1979 Chrysler New Yorker sedan: (yes, looks can be deceiving)
I, for one, understand the allure of your aunt’s car. I realize that I am in the minority here, but I considered the 79 New Yorker to be one of the most successful downsizings of the late 70s, certainly moreso than anything coming out of Ford. Too bad your aunt did not wait until 1980 or 81 when most of the problems had been worked out of these. Trying to salvage this platform was one of Iacocca’s very first (of many) emergencies after coming on there. The later ones were not bad cars (at least by the standard of current US cars. I would probably rather have one of these than a 1979-82 Panther.
The downsized 1979 Chryslers and Dodges were very handsome cars, and I would even go so far as to say that they were more attractive than their GM competition.
The oniy problem was that Chrysler’s reputation was already very bad when these cars debuted. If that wasn’t enough, the very real talk of a bankruptcy or government bailout in the summer of 1979, combined with that spring’s gas shortages, killed whatever sales momentum these cars had in the marketplace.
Chrysler killed this platform too soon. GM’s big cars were already showing signs of a sales recovery in 1982, and the M-body New Yorker 5th Avenue was a big seller for Chrysler in the 1980s. If Chrysler had stuck with the R-body, and continued to make improvements, I’ll bet that sales would have really started to pick up by 1983.
I’m right there with you. The R would have made a MUCH better brougham than the Fifth Avenue during the last boom that those cars would have in the mid to late 80s. With a touch of updating, it would have been a very competitive car and could have given the Panther a run for its money, especially after the big GM B/C body went FWD in 1985-86.
I am inclined to agree with the consensus that the R’s were nice – I too felt the styling was cleaner than the GM/Ford competition, but, as it has been pointed out, there were too many obstacles facing Chrysler in 1979. When Iacocca was sorting out the Mopar mess, the R’s were the first on the chopping block. I remember seeing back in 1981 a brand new Plymouth Gran Fury sedan and the pastel yellow paint was beautifully applied and all the trim pieces and seams were Japan-like perfect. Not like the ’79 Dodge St. Regis I saw brand new in Marin County, where the door panels, hood, fender and trunk lid seams were of varying degrees of gaps and alignment and the metallic maroon paint looked flat in certain areas (damaged in transit or damaged/deteriorated in the infamous Chrysler “car bank” of the late 70’s??). . . . .
The later Rs weren’t too bad but the early ones were quality disasters, real hit and miss stuff. It took Chrysler a good year to sort the cars out and by that time it was too late; the cars already had a bad reputation. It’s too bad because the later ones were really nice cars and drove very well due the torsion bar front end. Iacocca didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. There simply wasn’t enough money in the R to keep it alive.
The Chevrolet Caprice…”The New Chevrolet” was by far the best looking of the downsized full size cars of the late 70’s
Our handsome “79 Lebaron” was a bit of a manufactured trauma. Mom drove soo few miles by then, the car lasted her till 1991. That was in wstrn PA with no garage.. The elec door locks and lean burn power plant were the two persistent headaches.
My uncle bought a 79 New Yorker brand new. I saw it for the first time after he had owned it for about a year and I commented on it being such a nice car. He pointed to it and sternly said “That is a 13,000 dollar pile of shit!” This coming from a man who did not swear. I’ve owned Chrysler’s and own one now. They’ve always treated me well.
That’s a sharp-looking car! My ’81(light brown body/dark brown roof), not really. Then, I inherited Dad’s ’82(in “Goldenrod”)and, I was stylin’.
As usual, Lawrence great photographs. I see a really well done, high end, 24 inch by 16 inch or larger coffee table book in your future.
Thank you.
There’s only ONE thing that made those Chryslers cool besides their looks – the rear view mirror mounted on top of the dash.
I liked that a great deal, but probably not too practical, but anything to add style!
I Rode in one of those as a kid and the dashtop mirror is what I remember that was cool
They were cool, as a kid, and as a passenger…..
I could recite the story of the Forward Look 1957 Mopars in my sleep by this point, but I can’t get enough of Laurence’s stories and photos of these cars.
Maybe it’s because the 1957 cars were such a tipping point in the history of Chrysler. Their long-term failure pretty much ensured that Chrysler would never again seriously challenge Ford for second place.
It’s also fascinating to wonder how the company that built the rugged, high-quality 1946-52 cars could, within four years, approve for production designs that clearly were not ready for prime time. Didn’t anyone at Chrysler think about how releasing these cars prematurely could potentially damage the corporation’s image among customers?
Granted, all new cars have some bugs – even those 1955 Chevrolets did – but these cars were riddled with some serious problems. One wonders if Chrysler management thought that it could get away with one year of stinkers if the cars were dramatically new and stylish – as Ford did with its 1949 model.
On the other hand, if Chrysler had went with facelifted 1956 models, sales probably would have been lackluster for 1957, at best. Then the all-new Forward Look cars would have debuted in the fall of 1957 – just in time for the serious recession that began in the summer.
The four-seat 1958 Thunderbird did prove that a new model – even a relatively expensive one – could sell in a lousy market, if it was sufficiently new and attractive.
I have concluded that the company has never hit on all cylinders after Walter Chrysler died in 1937. He was a master and pulled together the engineering, the quality, the style and the market appeal (with the exception of the Airflow) all in one package. Nobody has been able to do it since.
I can’t blame him (or anyone) for the Airflow. Americans are just too conservative. It was one of the most brilliant cars, a huge step forward. And like the Corvair, the Europeans adored and imitated it.
It was a lesson that I guess just had to be learned the hard way.
+1, Paul. I’ve always loved the Airflow; of course, I also love the Citroen ‘Deesse”, so what do I know? Maybe it’s due to my French ancestry, but since I’ve never found Jerry Lewis the least bit funny, who knows?
Since writing about the Airflows a while back, I am increasingly convinced that the principal reason the Airflow flopped was that it was just too expensive. The cheapest 1934 CU Airflow Eight was $420 more than the most comparable ’33 Chrysler Eight. The cheapest ’35 Chrysler Airflow was close to $200 more than a Packard One-Twenty and about $250 more than the Chrysler Airstream Eight. That was a hell of a spread for the Depression and I think it would have produced the same result even if the public had loved the Airflow’s look.
Not so sure I agree with the “internal ugliness” comment…sure, they were rushed to market and suffered from that…but my ’59 Dodge, that I have owned since 1983, still starts right up every spring and heads on down the road in style…love it or leave it, you gotta admit these Forward Lookers had style! Granted, it’s driveability and handling does not match today’s standard, but what 50’s car does?
You’d think Studebaker’s 1953 debacle with the coupes would have made an impact on them.
Unless Chrysler started the new 1957 during mid-year like they did with the 1949 models “Second Series” as 1957½ models.
Then Ford launched a new 1957 Fairlane and Mercury models also plagued with some problems but not drastic as Chrylser. Had Chrysler launched a first series of 1957 as facelifted ’56, who knows if things could have been different?
Lawrence-another great post. Like it was said above your copy plus pictures are excellent and always a great read-it must have been ladies of a “certain age & generation”..or just a sign of the times-but as my Grandmother preferred her beloved Nova’s..my Great Aunt Loulabelle bought herself a 67 Camaro SS for her 5Oth birthday and could care less what the church ladies said…and my other Great Aunt Anne was always behind the wheel of an Imperial….from 59-70..and as she told me for a short gal she needed a big car for her big hair…my uncle used to have to put a cushion on the seat so she could see over the wheel.
Great post, great photography as usual.
I still love the forward look cars, someday I should scan some old pics of Dad’s 57 Plymouth Plaza.
Neither of my Grandmothers drove, so it’s kind of a weird concept to me. Legend is that Grandma D only drove a car once, and immediately put Grandpa’s Valiant over the curb.
Well, I’m only 30, and my (Maternal) Great Grandmother Clara would have been 90 this year. The generation gap is only 20 years on that side of the family (my mother is 51, my Grandmother would have been 70). So my great grandmother became of driving age during the war years when she would have had to be more independent, with my Great Grandfather away in the war.
In contrast my dad’s mom, who would have been 98 this year, never learned how to drive, and only worked in the summer when the older siblings could look after the younger ones. There’s a lot of circumstance behind it all
You’re only 30, Jones? You look much older! Just busting your chops, Laurence–a thoroughly enjoyable article, as always. Keep ’em coming!
Yeah, good point. My Grandparents didn’t own vehicles until they emigrated in the early 50’s, at which point Grandmothers were over 40 & never learned to drive.
Interesting my Paternal grandmother never drove and that pair only owned 2 motor vehicles, A Ford Model A bought well used for 35 pounds and driven from 1935 until 53 and traded on a 46 Ford Prefect. My maternal grandmother learned to drive in her 60s when she was widowed and she learned good she could feed the steering wheel into a slide in her 56 Morris Minor with the best of em. All those people were born prior to the car being invented when actually seeing one was an event.
great article and pix, laurence. my grandfather drove dodge darts. there seems to be an attraction of that generation to chrysler products…
Laurence, I always look forward to your posts: great photography and great stories related to cars and frequently linked to your family. I hope you find the photos of the old Chrysler.
My great aunt drove Chrysler products, all bought new: a 49 DeSoto, 55 DeSoto (baby blue and white Firedome 2-door hardtop), 65 Chrysler Newport 4-door hardtop, 74 Chrysler Newport (the one lemon) and 76 Cordoba (metallic blue with white vinyl top – her last car).
I loved the 57 New Yorker as a kid and still have a warped acetate Jo-han model of that car stored away – IIRC the two-tone colors are a kind of coral pink with charcoal grey. I may be in the minority, but I loved the 1964 Chrysler, and the latest edition of Hemmings Classic Car features the 64 special edition called Silver 300 that is just gorgeous.
Keep up the good work!
Grandparents, paternal Uncles/Aunties . . . all drove Mopars exclusively until they were bit with “Ford Fever” in the mid-seventies. My one late Uncle, it was his shit-can ’78 Plymouth Fury wagon that sealed his fate to desert Mopar.
Point of correction in this article – it was only the ’57 Plymouths that had the torsion bar snapping problem. Why? Plymouths, being lower down on the Mopar totem pole and competing in the low price field, obviously had some decontenting/costs cut out of the product. One was the carrover of the ’55-56 pull door handles. The other was the let’s save a dollar-per-car omission of a rubber grommet in the torsion bar anchor. Without this key part (Dodges, DeSotos, Chryslers and Imperials had it), dirt and mud along with moisture would get kicked up by the front wheels and all this crap would lodge in the anchor area and . . . you guessed it . . . . corroded. Salted road climes made things worse.
Note to self: If restoring a ’57 Plymouth, retrofit that grommet!
The photos of that yellow New Yorker are exquisite.
That reminds me in a big way of my own 57 New Yorker. It was turquoise with a white top and stripe. The interior was composed of several different shades of blues and greens. In my car it went well with the turquoise paint, but I saw a black New Yorker sedan with the same interior, and in that car it looked green. I really liked the instrument panel with its large dials. I bought it used from a neighbor in around 1967; it showed close to 100,000 miles at the time. I made one small alteration shortly after I got it; the dash-mounted mirror wouldn’t hold still, so I removed it and replaced it with a windshield-mounted one.
It was not a small automobile, but either my wife or I could see all four corners of it from the driver’s seat; that and the power steering and brakes made it easy to drive, maneuver, and park.
Even though there was enough slop in the timing chain on the 392 hemi so that it couldn’t be tuned on a scope, it could be ear-tuned well enough to run 10,000 miles on a set of plugs. The car had the good handling qualities that the 1957 Mopars became known for, and we got quite a bit of good use out of it.
One time we had a hard freeze, and when I started the car it made a god-awful fanbelt squeal. I hurriedly shut it off, and discovered some slushy ice when I pulled the radiator cap. I guess the noise was made by the water pump pulley refusing to turn. I drove something else that day, and the big hemi didn’t suffer any ill effects.
Then there was the time we stopped to get gas – this was back in the day when most stations were still we-serve, and the kid asked if I wanted the oil checked. “Sure,” I said. He found the latch after just a minute, opened the hood, and stood there looking for the dipstick for a long minute. Finally, not realizing that we could see under the bottom edge of the opened hood, he pulled the dipstick out of the power steering pump, carefully checked the oil level, replaced it, closed the hood, and told us we had plenty of oil. I told him that was fine, and didn’t let on what we knew. The ’57 was clearly the only Chrysler hemi he’d ever seen.
I ended up selling it to my brother, who took it to San Juan Island to use as an island car while he was doing a construction job there. He sold it to an islander after the job was completed.
I’ve looked longingly at several other ’57 and ’58 New Yorkers since then, but haven’t bought another.
I loved my 59 Fury sedan, but always really wished it had been a Chrysler, or at least a DeSoto. I am quite sure I would have been head over heels in love with your New Yorker.
Lawrence, great story and outstanding photography, as always. My father had a 57 Dodge (Custom Royal? Not an expert on the names before the 60’s). It was gold and white two tone, also powered by one of the early Hemi V8’s, and reminds me of this car quite a bit. Somewhere in a bin of old photographs, I have an early color picture from the early 60’s of this car in a Flying A gas station in Philadelphia. I need to find it to post sometime, but man does your photography reproduce that look of early color pictures.
I have to say the subject cars themselves, and a number of times the settings really help. The older I get the more Sepia toned memories of the Bay Area become in my mind
I guess the less and less it actually looks like my own memories of the 1980s, the more and more I want to capture that “feel.” A lot of the Peninsula looked exactly the same in my mid 1980’s formative years as it did in my mother’s mid 1960’s formative years, but a lot has drastically changed since then.
But there’s areas that haven’t: Belmont and ‘burbs all the way into Daly City, Alameda and parts of Oakland/Albany minus any modern cars in the background seem to blur the boundaries of time, so that’s my inspiration for the look in my photos, before it all disappears for good.
Things are much the same on the east coast with regard to the way things have changed in the past few decades in the name of progress / the American dream. So much so that I barley recognize much of my hometown. Where we differ is on how the many cars from decades ago still exist in the drier climates of the west, parked on a street to grab a picture of. With rare exceptions, the only cars older than 15 years here are found in garages, at car shows, or in scrap yards.
Regardless, keep up your effort to document the history of your hometown and the cars that still roam it’s streets.
As always , great work Lawrence .
-Nate
Great story. Grandfathers last car was a ’65 Bonneville convertible. His wife never did learn to drive. Other Grandmothers last car was a ’68 Camaro convertible.
I never saw either car with the top down while they were driving. Both had AC in sunny Southern California.
Laurence, what a great article. Can’t believe I missed this the first time around. It’s funny, but my dad’s father, a retired steelworker, had a ’64 Chrysler as his last car, and it replaced a ’56. He bought his used, though.
I don’t know what a pre-cc effect should be called, but I had one a week ago in beautiful Cranbury, NJ when a pristine ’57 DeSoto Fireflite Sportsman 4 door h/t passed me going the other way. As I looked at the rear, I was reminded – as with your great photos – of just how much the fins on the Chryslers, DeSotos, and Imperials were canted outward, something that never seems to come across in profile shots. Probably the one thing about this design I’d quibble about. Until I got one of my own, of course 😉
” It’s well documented that in terms of quality, the 1957 model year was an unmitigated disaster for Highland Park,…”
Why was 1957 such a bad year? Was there problems with the quality of the materials used to build the cars, or were there issues with the manufacturing process and/or the workers on the assembly lines?
I don’t know all the reasons for the 1957s lack of quality. But I know it was the first year Chrysler was making it’s own bodies. Prior to that Briggs had been making the bodies.
One of the more subtle aspects of the ’57 MoPar bodies is the lack of molding or sheet-metal lip at the base of the greenhouse. Ford began using this little trick c. 1960; look at the new Continental for another example. This detail echoes what architects were doing at the time: eliminating extraneous transitioning devices where possible, moldings being one of the obvious sources of unwanted “busyness.” And the specific detail of glass meeting the floor and/or the walls and ceilings without trim, was certainly an inspiration to Detroit stylists to do the same.
Frank Lloyd Wright included this detail often; glass meets stone directly at Fallingwater, and in any number of the later houses glazing extrends to the plaster or sheetrock walls and ceiling and disappears into a groove or reglet. (The surprise at Fallingwater is that it was the client, not Wright, who suggested that detail !)
And similarly in the interior there isn’t the metal windowsill that all cars had before. The door upholstery wraps right up to the window glass.
I crossed paths with a Forward Look Imperial on the road this morning, complete with trunk donut and freestanding taillights. Fortunately, I’m not a Mopar guy and didn’t drive off the road.
From what I have read over years Chryslers quality problems were a combination of design errors, poor quality materials, & bad assembly. So sad for such beautiful cars. Thanks Mike
Actually Mike ;
Mostly due to management speeding up the assembly lines to crank out more product faster .
I don’t have problems with Chrysler’s engineering overall, and every older Mechanic knows the original shocks, mufflers and batteries were only made to last three years by de$ign .
-Nate