Junkyard Sales Lot: 1964 Imperial for $4000 – Here’s Your Chance!

Gas prices are going back down, spring cleaning has begun in earnest, the junkyard is always looking for a worthy candidate to rescue from the crusher, and you, dear Curbside Classic reader, happen to love the MoPar product!  There is no better time than right now to head to Aurora, Colorado and snap up the best condition 1964 Imperial that I’ve seen in years for pocket change money.

Yeah, that’s right, while inflation is picking up again, this beautiful 1964 Imperial has been offered at $4,000 since I first saw it two weeks ago and perhaps is actually getting cheaper.  As of Thursday it was still sitting on the lot without much else of interest around it to compete for eyeballs and cash.

How did it end up here?  Who knows, but it was a local car, and even has a Lowry Air Force Base sticker on the front bumper (Lowry was decommissioned in 1994 and now houses an excellent airplane museum “Wings Over The Rockies Air & Space Museum”).  It is located just a few short miles from where this Imperial now awaits YOU, its next owner.

Whenever I show a junked car the comments almost invariably include several lamenting that the car should have been saved, the commenter would have loved to have had it, why do we get rid of all the nice things, and so on…Well, here is your chance to rectify that state of the world and make your own little mark, (or big mark I suppose) and buy this car, the one you so richly deserve for less than a 15 year old Hyundai Accent knocking on 200,000 miles would cost you.  If nobody buys it, it WILL end up in the yard, picked over, desecrated, and sooner rather than later, crushed.  Steel prices are (way) up, and there’s a lot of it in this car, they won’t wait forever.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you, mister!

Is it original?  Sure looked that way to me when I cast my eyeballs uponst its magnificence, all spread out on the gravel lot in front of me.  The color appears to be Nassau Blue, a perfect shade for presumably a higher up muckety-muck in the U.S. Air Force of yesteryear.

The interior is blue leather according to the build tag, combined with the blue exterior a fetching combination that should please everyone.

And look at those seats!  The leather, the tufting, the slight wear marks making it known that this is more comfortable than the La-Z-Boy in the parlor, these are seats to behold!

The rear is pretty much a twin of the front, this is lay down all day comfortable.

Here’s the back seat driver’s view, the early to mid ’60s sure were swell in regard to interior design!  Knobs, buttons, brightwork, automatic headlight dimmer on a pedestal, seemingly room for four abreast…

Push-button transmission selector on the left, 120mph speedometer front and center, and a long skinny accelerator pedal for some fat torque.

413 cubic inches of power (6.8l) generating 340hp as standard in the obligatory V8 format paired to the TorqueFlite 3-speed transmision.

There’s no battery in these pictures but I was there when they installed one, cranked the key, and had it turning over just fine with no untoward noises.  There was fuel leaking out of the carburetor, likely a dried up gasket, but everything seemed ready for some minimal fettling that our readers fondly remember from the good old days, a fresh tank of hi-test and that priceless feeling of getting probably the best pound per dollar spend ratio of the year.

And look in the driver’s side upper corner of the engine bay, the AutoPilot!  Don’t let the feds hear about that…

Beyond the leaky carb, the only other things of note that I would mention are a flat tire (but best to replace all four anyway), and the trunk seemed to not open with the key (although they did have it open earlier).  Both keys (doors and ignition, remember when they were separate?) were present and looked original, and the badging is all complete as well.  Basically the hard stuff to replace/repair is intact and in place.

While Imperial was the top dog of the Chrysler hierarchy itself, there were several tiers within it.  This one is the “Imperial Crown” in four door hardtop form, there was also a Crown Coupe, a Crown Convertible, and above it all sat the Imperial LeBaron, which is a little shocking since my immediate visual when I hear LeBaron is a teal green with white convertible front wheel drive crap box in the Emerald Aisle of National Car Rental circa 1992.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen…

Our example is the most common format with 14,181 built for 1964 which is about twice as many as all the other variants combined.  That’s okay though, as you’ll be able to find a spare part all that much easier should it be needed.  Always go for the most common model, anything else is just asking for trouble.

An Imperial Eagle indeed.  The ’64 rear end really isn’t Elwood Engel’s best work as far as I am concerned but that matters not as you are the one buying this big bird to reward yourself, not me.  My reward will be seeing your pleasure.

I’ll bet there was a happy salesperson (salesman for sure in 1964, no?) at Bill Eger Motors in Lakewood early in 1964 when this was delivered to the Captain, or the Colonel, or whatever rank the Lowry AFB denizen held.  The dealership location is now an Enterprise Rent-A-Car facility, by the way, somehow bringing me full circle to the LeBaron reference from above.  But I digress.

Looking back, I suppose the early to mid ’60s would have been an interesting time to be around.  Lots of interesting cars being released, hemlines were up, and the weather looks generally great whenever I see pictures of the era.  Of course there were many issues as well and I’d now be somewhat older than I am, but if you had the means to pamper yourself with a new Imperial, those issues would presumably be a lot less pressing, personally at least.

Starting at the bottom (duplicated on top), this car was built on October 3rd, and this was the 76th produced on the line that day. 924 is the body style code for four door Crown hardtop.  M3B is the trim code for Blue Leather and DD is the paint code for Nassau Blue paint.

It’s got both hubcaps on this side, but there’s the flat tire…Still, this car started at $5,581 in 1964 (which is the equivalent of about $58,831 in today’s money which actually seems pretty reasonable, that barely gets you a mid-level full size pickup today, certainly not the top dog.  And remember, the 1964 Imperial weighed 4970 pounds, so about $1.12 a pound in 1964.  But this car can be yours for $4000 which is less than 81 cents a pound in TODAY’s dollars!  What else are you gonna get for 81 cents?  Or at least you could on Thursday when I wrote this, I don’t know about today, so don’t dally.  They’ll even throw in the cover that came with it and can be seen to the right of this picture.  So call U-Pull-&-Pay in Aurora, Colorado and tell them to set you up as there is no way this will be around forever, not with the way gas prices are coming down again.  Do your part and spend a little money, can’t take it with you after all…