(pictures and text by L. Seddon)
Another rare Chrysler Imperial product! – This time it is an official “Imperial” stand-alone brand from Chrysler Corp! – This car is a 1965 Imperial Crown Series AY-1 2-Door, 6-Passenger Hardtop Coupe, model code; “AY1-M-23”, period age-related Cumberland registration black plate “KRM 110C”, first registered in the U.K. in February 2016.
This car is fitted with a 4-barrel, 360-Hp, 6.8-litre, 413-CID “Wedge” V8 engine, assuming the transmission is original, this car would have a genuine “TorqueFlite” 3-speed automatic. Semifloating 2.93:1 live rear axle hypoid differential, independent torsion bar suspension and rear longitudinal leaf springs, powered-hydraulic brakes, power windows, power steering, etc, painted in “Persian White” (assuming original), with a black vinyl roof, faded light grey leather interior. This was a very luxurious car for its day!
This Imperial is one of only 3,974 examples built for the 1965 model year, making this a very car car nowadays, and an extremely rare car in the U.K. This car would’ve sold for no less than $5,930.00 when new, which – adjusted for inflation would be roughly $51,500.00 in 2020/21 money.
I spotted this car on the way out of a Metallica concert at The Etihad Stadium, in East-Central Manchester, Greater Manchester, UK., on the 18th of June, 2019. This was my fith time seeing Metallica (“WorldWired” tour, featuring Ghost as support), and seeing this gorgeous luxurious MoPar classic parked in the big parking lot on the way out afterwards was such a treat for me!
These photos of the large crowds spilling out onto the wet street after the concert at night-time, passing this very rare classic car surrounded by modern, commonplace cars provides quite an interesting contrast compared to my other pictures of classics. This Imperial got a lot of positive attention from the concert-goers leaving the stadium; young-and-old.
Last year for the 413 (1966 got the new 440). Didn’t know there was an option to get a padded continental hump, either.
And, man, those are some small tail/brake lights. I wonder how many 1965 Imperials ended up getting rear-ended at night.
” there was an option to get a padded continental hump”
99.99% sure that is aftermarket. Someone probably replaced the vinyl top at some point, and the owner was inspired by ’70s Lincolns and had this added at the time.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should……
I thought it might not have been OEM. Certainly doesn’t look good, but at least they did a good ‘job’ of it, what with reinstalling the ‘IMPERIAL’ lettering and attaching a chrome molding around the edge of the padding.
I know of an incident where a driver buried a Niedermeyer Ford pickup into the back of such an Imperial.
He told me that as he watched the wreck in “live slow motion” he felt so disappointed when he saw the Ford’s new steer tire tearing its way into the truck’s cab, he said he remembered thinking: “The tire’s going to be okay, it’s still holding air” lol
Love that car. Invincible in demo derbies.
My GF’s loaded 1965 New Yorker listed for almost as much and shared the indoor door handles that were so cool..
Briton definition is – a member of one of the peoples inhabiting Britain prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasions.
It’s easy to tell the demo derby Imperials by the windshield. The ‘good’ ones with the sturdy BoF construction that made them invincible at the demo derbys kept the old wraparound windshield.
When the Imperial switched to the same unibody construction as every other Chrysler product, it lost the wraparound. Certainly looked more modern, but the trade-off was a loss in ride quality. It was really the beginning of the downward spiral of the Imperial being just another Chrysler instead of its own marque.
That has to be in the running for one of the longest cars ever built. Google says it was 220 inches. I think the CC record was a mid ’70s Olds Ninety Eight maybe, at 223 inches if I recall.
What a huge piece of machinery! As to having been rear ended, drivers approaching from the rear would have a large chunk of metal to have to miss seeing to collide with this.
Thanks for capturing this dying breed.
My ’66 Bonneville convertible (1974-91) was 222 inches; of course this was without the added length of 1970s bumpers. I’ve read that the 1973 Imperial, with the bumper rubber blocks added, was the longest standard car ever.
1973 Imperial reportedly 235.3 inches – the longest non-limo passenger car ever in the US
The 1973 Imperial LeBaron had styling carried over from the previous year’s redesign. It was a refined version of the evolutionary fuselage design body. The 1973 had flowing uninterrupted lines devoid of chrome and gaudy trim. With the industry mandate of five mph impact bumpers, the Imperial’s overall length was increased by 5.8” which made it the longest production non-limousine made that year in America at 235.3” long!
https://notoriousluxury.com/2013/10/26/fresh-metal-1973-imperial-lebaron/
Why do I get a Green Hornet vibe every time I see one of these? ;o)
The Green Hornet’s “Black Beauty” was a fairly heavily modified 1966 Imperial Crown.
Wow, there can NOT be many of these in the UK! Really, these Crown Coupes were never common anywhere. This is almost a twin the the 64 Crown Coupe I owned in the early 90s, and one of the reasons I bought it was because even in a really high production year there were right around 5000 of them built. I was never a huge fan of white cars with black trim (which was huge in the 60s) but these Imps looked pretty good, especially with the white leather interior like mine had.
The 65 would have been the first year for a gearshift lever in an Imperial since 1955. Another reason I bought my 64 was for the cool-factor of the pushbuttons.
I have never seen one of these with the vinyl/padding/trim on the rear hump. I wonder what was the story with that.
One of the cars in my fantasy-garage is a ’64 Imperial (for the pushbutton gears) with ’65 front-end parts (for the headlamps under glass) and the export lighting package as seen on this ’66 (for the WTAF). Mine would be a 4-door without the minified backglass.
That said: wow, those opposing-sweep wipers sure left a giant unswept area in a very bad place for it!
I actually prefer opposing sweep wipers (never heard them called that before but it’s the best name I have heard for them) over one side to the other sweeper wipers. My 2001 Caravan had the opposing sweeps, and did a very good job of covering the midsection, leaving good visibility. I’m sure a rainy climate like England was not what they had in mind when they designed these.
One other feature on these Imperials I was just noticing was how the leading edge of the taillight protrusion from rear quarter panel and into the rear bumper has that leading effect. Quite an eye catching feature.
I think the grilles on these were too garish, too large, kind of oversized. I think they wanted them to appear larger than the Chrysler Newports and New Yorkers.
Recent opposing-sweep wipers, with plenty of overlap between the left and right wipers, are at least as good as parallel-sweep wipers. Olde-tyme ones like on this Imperial, though, with no overlap, are really bad. Giant blind spot for the driver, directly in the line of sight to pedestrians crossing right-to-left. This really shows the good effect of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard № 104, which took effect on 1/1/68 for vehicles at least 68 inches wide (1/1/69 for all others). It requires that a certain (large) percentage of the windshield be swept by the wipers, and further specifies where unwiped glass may (not) be located relative to driver lines of sight.
I am a big fan of the trailing end of the ’64-’66 Imperials, which was echoed in the ’70-’73 Darts and ’71-’73 Scamps. As to the front ends…h’mmm. I don’t like the ’66 Imperial (too busy), but then I think more than one of the ’66 Mopars were frontally uglier than their ’65 counterparts. Now I think about it, I do prefer the ’64 and ’65 Chrysler front ends to the ’64 and ’65 Imperial front ends.
Contemporaries of the Imperial model were the Mercedes W111, W108 models with opposing sweep wipers which overlapped (like many cars today – my wife’s 2012 Civic has them). I wonder if they had better sweeping coverage of the windshield than the wipers of the Imperial, and many other cars of that time.
I wasn’t aware there were still some American cars with non-overlap “clapping” opposing wipers in 1966. What was the last car to use them? I know GM divisions all switched to parallels at different times.
I am guessing the ’66 Imperial was [one of?] the last.
The unswept spot with the clapper wipers got worse as the windsheilds became larger (more angle = increased glass height). I think GM started doing an overlap in 1961 and almost everyone else started abandoning the clappers soon after, even on existing models (like the 63 Ford Galaxie and the 63 Studebaker Lark). The 64 Chryslers/B bodies and 66 Imperials were probably the last that did not overlap – I should add the 64 Studebaker Hawk and Champ pickup too, which both kept old systems.
The tradeoff with parallel wipers of that time period is how only one wiper parked on flat glass – the other parked on the curve at the edge of a windshield (that curved at its edges much more severely than in modern cars). Unless they were used almost constantly, that setup would flatten the middle part of the rubber blade on (usually) the passenger side. The result was big unswept streaks all through the arc of the right side wiper with all but the freshest rubber blade. So, as with almost everything, good maintenance practices (frequent new blades) saw much better vision with parallel wipers, but systems with old rubber were as bad or worse than with the clappers.
Wow, there are likely just two amber rear lenses in the universe that fit a ’65 Imperial – provided this car still exists.
Hens teeth, indeed.
My thought, too (this is a ’66, but your point stands). There weren’t a lot of countries that were militant about requiring amber rear turn signals and side turn signal repeaters at that time. Italy is a prime candidate in this car’s case.
I know exactly where I’d go to get a set like it made, though!
I like that there enough rear lighting compartments available to still afford white reverse lamps with the amber turn signals.
My friend Peter Economuff and I once raced such a beast in bygone years, with decent success, everyone was afraid to hit the Imperial, they knew they would be the looser. At the end of the season, the blue painted rear bumper was still I scratched.
It was sad that these didn’t sell better. Even though they didn’t sell all that well, most people did still have a certain respect for them back in the 1960s. In those days, Lincolns seemed to sell better than Imperials, but they weren’t really big sales successes either. At least, not compared to Cadillac. Lincoln sales seemed to improve significantly in the 1970s, but Imperial sales only seemed to get worse and when they were discontinued, not many people notices.