(first posted 8/12/2012) 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.
Just look at a ’67/8 Fury dash and a ’69 and you can see the result of the cost cutting.
Lynn Townshend did a fine job of getting Chrysler Corporation out of the ditch. The excellence and success of the 65 full size Plymouth and Chrysler is his Iacoçca K car moment. But Chrysler always was walking a tightrope with its inherently lower volume, and he wasn’t able to perfectly balance the company for long.
I had a 56 Chrysler Winsdor. It was far more beautiful than my 57 chevy 210, but one tenth as well thought out. My favorite problem was the one year only engine mounts, which when broken would dangle the engine between the frame rails, suspended by the remaining mount. Thankfully it broke going 10 mph.
There were many poorly planned things about that car. The Chevy was a model of thoughtful design by comparison.
Because of the “Lincoln resemblance” I always thought that this car cried out for a 4 door convertible as well.
Precisely why one never was made. It was obvious enough, where the Imperial’s bloodline came from – to have added the one body style to the lineup that only one other marque had mastered to date would have been painfully obvious for Chrysler. Why advertise their obvious descent from Lincoln by producing the exact same car?
Gotta admit, though – it would have been priceless for model year 1969 to have had TWO convertible sedans from competing marques on the market. I bet the available clientele would have seen through the artifice, though.
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.
There were a lot of Imperials in Get Smart too, usually driving the Chief around.
Classic Scanimate title sequence, if I’m not mistaken.
Don’t forget the Beverly Hillbillies show. The banker Mr Drysdale always drove an Imperial and Miss Jane, his secretary, usually had a mopar convertible.
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.
Man, that’s a beautiful car. I love the triple black set off by the turbine wheel covers. Beautiful photos too, that really capture the linearity of the design. I hope this car is leading a pampered existence.
I would like to buy that car, do you have the sellers number? I love 60’s Mopars and next to a 61-62 300 letter series convertible this on is on the mark. I was on CL yesterday all over the country looking for a convertible but I did not see this one.
Sorry, the article originally ran in 2012… the car’s not shown up again since.
“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.”
Having owned a similar 60’s-era convertible, they are not great road trip cars (at least if the top is down and those roads involve speed limits greater than 45 mph). Wind control on these cars are basically non-existent, and the rear seats are uninhabitable at freeway speeds with the top down.
Nice, too bad this post is five years old, one of my co-workers is looking to buy a classic car and late 60s Imperial is on the short list.
I looked back through my photo archives, and found one of the For Sale sign on the window. Again, this was originally posted in 2012, so the car most likely sold years ago.
The thing about Imperial convertibles is that the people who bought them new, knew that they were rare and their survival numbers are high proportionately. Unfortunately there aren’t enough Jay Leno types who appreciate them and can afford to restore them to their former elegance.
I love the rear styling of the 1967-1968 Imperials with the bladed chrome-ended fenders and the huge, ribbed taillights flanking a round central ornament.
This car is absolutely beautiful. My grandfather drove a four-door hardtop version of this car, in dark blue. I loved seeing it pull up in front of our house when he’d drive over to our place on holidays or special occasions. I’m a huge fan of the mid-60s to mid 70s Mopars, and this blog site has convinced me to begin watching for a potential Mopar purchase. Thanks for posting this beauty! Mike R, Omaha
I love the photos of the front and rear fender ‘blades’. They really highlight the rectilinear styling, showing those tall vertical fender ends with the beautiful grille detailing on the front and those long, long horizontal sweeps down the sides. So much nicer than Cadillac’s trademark but passe fins, and more attractive that what the once-beautiful Continental was morphing into. If you really must ‘fill out the box to the corners’ on a prestige car, this is the way to do it. Ultimate Engel.
+1
Wow what a sweetie ! .
.
Why can’t new cars come with close to glassine paint like this car has ? .
.
-Nate
Of all the Imperials, this is one of my least favorite, and the reason is the split and that damn dip in the middle of the grille. If Chrysler had just carried over the theme from the ’67 car, simply replacing the ‘IMPERIAL’ lettering with the horizontal bars and moving the lettering to the front of the hood, it would have been fine.
But it looks like someone really wanted the Imperial eagle medallion inserted into the middle of the grille, and the stylists did the best they could to accommodate that edict, wherever it might have originated.
Speaking of ’67 Imperials:
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/12536
Safety tip – don’t watch Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster” films if you are averse to the destruction of beautiful old cars…
“Barney’s Chrysler Imperial (2002) encapsulates sequences from the final film of his five-part CREMASTER cycle (1994–2003), which summarizes the essential themes of this epic multimedia project. Each of the five main sculptural components, abstracted from cars competing in a demolition derby set in the lobby of the Chrysler Building around 1930, bears the insignia of a specific CREMASTER episode and embodies the conflicts explored in the film cycle. As an abridged version of the cycle, Chrysler Imperial exemplifies how Barney distills cinematic narrative into sculptural dimensions—using his signature Vaseline and cast plastics—to extrapolate in space what he explores in time. In the narrative sequence that generated Chrysler Imperial, Barney’s character, a Masonic candidate who eventually cheats on his initiation rites, is seen troweling cement over the fuel-tank valves on the rear chassis of five 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperials, transforming them into battering rams. The ’67 Imperials encircle a 1930 Chrysler Imperial New Yorker like hunters around an animal in a snare and proceed to pulverize their victim in what appears to be a ritual killing. Once crushed, the New Yorker is transformed into a set of chrome dentures, which are fitted in the mouth of the Masonic candidate after his teeth had been shattered on a railing as punishment for his trespasses. The sculpture that evolved from these filmic interludes is conceived in six major parts: five abstracted car forms representing the Imperials (and by extension the CREMASTER installments) and one plastic rod representing the pulverized New Yorker’s transformation into disciplinary dentures.”
I remember that round trunk ornament from the 60’s when I was a kid – that was the mark of an Imperial to me during the relevant years. I alsways liked the look of this element.
Given that ’67 was the first year for the deleted spare tire trunk design , was this ornament intended to be a vestigial homage to it?
I find that the front fender and door shot looks a lot like a Mercury.
Also that shot of the rear could just as easily be understood to be the front of a car.
Good looking car, maybe also because it is not obviously using CC corporate parts bin items.
Never particularly found the round ‘Imperial LeBaron’ grille and trunk lid badging, that attractive. They last used it on the 1980 LeBaron Fifth Avenue, where I didn’t find it flattering. Later Fifth Avenue grille, cleaner without it.
My dad’s ’68 Imperial, in (IMHO) awful bronze was a pretty decent car with one endless flaw, the A/C would get stuck on high and it would take a dealer visit and $$$ to fix it. That black leather was COLD when the A/C was stuck.
He kept the Imp for 2 years, about as long as he ever kept a car, it was replaced for 2 whole weeks when he bought the “I’ve never hated a car this much!” ’69 Lincoln MKIII. The Imp went to mom for a while, then my dad and his brother traded cars, the Lincoln for my uncle’s ’69 Sedan De Ville. Both were in that awful avacado green. My dad had the Caddy until ’73, when he passed out and wrecked it, knocking out power to about 1/4 of Toledo. It was hard to see how he even survived the wreck, let alone came out of it with a broken nose and a couple of loose teeth. No seatbelt, he refused to wear one.