Last month I saw a 1973 Chrysler Imperial. It was the longest non-limousine car I’ve ever seen. It must have been 19 or 20 feet long. How long was it exactly?
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How long was the 1973 Chrysler Imperial?
About a year.
After that the 1974 Chrysler was imperial.
Dang! Beat me to it.
A little under 20 feet. From 1969 to 1973 Imperials: Imperial LeBaron and Crown | Allpar Forums :
Well, Yabob beat me to it but, yeah, 19.6 feet according to this site as well.
Well, 5975mm anyway. Conversion provided free of charge.
Amazing. How did people parallel park, I wonder?
You didn’t park it. You berthed it.
With Tug boats
Declan
It wasn’t that hard. With the giant chrome-plated steel bumpers and a 6 liter engine you could just nuzzle up to the car in front and shove it a few feet forward, then move the car in the rear out of the way in the same way until you had plenty of room.
6 liter engine??? Try 440 cubic inches of big block Mopar, that is 7.4 liters.
Amazing. My jaw dropped as I read all the measurements quoted in yabob’s post.
I think I understood all of them except for “knee room.” That’s an odd designation, and it being a mere 6.9" I’m having a hard time figuring out what exactly they meant. Any ideas?
FWIW, my first car was a 1962 Chrsyler Newport. At 17 feet long it was the baby of the Chrysler family. What was amazing wasn’t the length, but the width. The car was 7 feet wide. The front seat measured 5 feet.
As for how we parallel parked, think about it. If all the cars were big, we were all working off the same point of reference. That and curb feelers.
Not all cars were that large. I was wondering how anyone driving a 19-foot car could find a space between cars big enough to get into.
FWIW, my fist car was about three inches less than 13 feet long.
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“From September 1972 to mid-July 1973”
I learned to drive on a 1963 Newport. Small world.
While that car was wide, it was not as wide as my '68 Plymouth Fury. My Fury was at least a foot wider than the Newport.
I almost bought a 1972 Imperial LeBaron a few years ago. It was painted black and had all of the windows including the windshield tinted. Awesome looking car. You’d expect a bunch of guys named Guido to get out with machine guns. Unfortunately, the rocker panels consisted entirely of Bondo, and while it looked good, it probably wouldn’t have stayed looking good for long.
Anyway, I have to point out that there was no Chrysler Imperial, the make was Imperial. It was made by Chrysler just as Dodge and Plymouth were made by Chrysler. They haven’t made one since the early 90s…there was an Imperial that was pretty much the same as a New Yorker or Dodge Dynasty. Prior to that, I think 1980 was the next-to-last year they made one, which looked exactly like the small(er) Cordoba with a few modifications to the headlights and taillights. Frank Sinatra had one of these.
The Imperial was always the highest trim level of any Mopar…Plymouth being the lowest. Prior to the 1980 model, the Imperial was always a C-Body, which was the largest platform of any Chrysler product.
Yes-the big Mopars were something. My last was a 1977 Plymouth Grand Fury Brougham. It was like driving your easy chair-the thing was huge, with power everything and a 400 engine that drank premium.
While it is true that from 1956 (1955?) through 1975, the Imperial was its own marque, few people in the public really noticed the difference. I’m sure the beanies at Chrysler paid attention to that distinction, but all the kids I knew whose dads were engineers and stylists at Chrysler (I lived in suburban Detroit) and all my high school classmates who spent hours poring over new cars and college classmates who looked for used yachts to drive, continued to call it the “Chrysler Imperial” throughout the 1960s.
While I haven’t driven the 73 model, I learned to drive in a 71 Newport (and have a 69 Newport) which are essentially the same cars, with lower level trim packages and the steering on the cars is amazingly responsive. I’ve driven many newer and lighter cars which didn’t handle as well as the old C-body barges. Mind you, if the powersteering goes out, you’d better have arms the size of trash cans if you want to drive the car, but with the powersteering working, you could handle the car as well as a sports car.
It’s worth noting that the Plymouth and Dodge variants were the police cars of that era. (That’s also what the Blues Mobile was.) They were insanely powerful and the handling meant that you could keep up with the baddest of the baddies.
My first car was a '62 Olds 98 But I can’t seem to find any specifications on it. I do know you could put a 10 speed bike in the trunk without taking off the wheels or anything.
