A Brief History
In the early 1910s Walter P. Chrysler began working at the Buick Motor Company. In 1916, William C. Durant, a wealthy and powerful pioneer at the head of the American auto industry of the time, convinced Chrysler to keep working as the head of Buick for just three more years by offering to give him the equivalent of 15.5 million of today's US dollars a year*. Chrysler was ultimately not happy with Durant's vision for the American car industry though, and in 1919 he left Buick, and by extension Durant's General Motors holding company, for good.
After a brief stint in charge of the Willys-Overland Motor Company, Chrysler gained control of the Maxwell Motor company, which in 1925 became the Chrysler Corporation. In 1926 Chrysler released its flagship model for the world to see, and the Chrysler Imperial was born.
In the year the Imperial was introduced it broke the US trans-continental speed record, crossing coast to coast in a week, and was used as the Indy 500 pace car. The first series of Imperial was proudly called the Series-80 after its ability to cruise all day at a then impressive 80 miles per hour (129km/h).
On January 7th 1929, Chrysler was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year, but he wasn't done yet. The Series-80 Imperial was only powered at this point by a (for the time) modestly sized 288.6 or 309.3 cubic inch (4.7 or 5.1 Litre) in-line 6, but in 1931 this issue was solved by the introduction of the Chrysler Imperial 8.
Powered for the first time by an eight cylinder engine the Imperial was now capable of nearly 100 miles per hour (161 km/h). It was in this second generation that the formula for an Imperial was set for the next half century, a large eight cylinder engine, a massive overall size, and an engineering elegance unmatched by any other major American luxury car manufacturer.
Imperials continued to set automotive luxury and engineering standards for the next few decades. In 1934 Chrysler offered the Imperial with the Airflow body, the first production car ever designed in a wind tunnel. Rare Imperial Limousines had by now found their way not just into the hands of wealthy businessmen, but also into the hands of world leaders. A number of US and foreign officials were chauffeured around in custom Imperial limousines, including US Admiral Chester Nimitz who used one as a staff car while serving as the, "commander in chief, pacific ocean areas", during WW2. This particular car was valued by Life magazine at US$25,000 in 1940, when the average house in the US cost less than US$3,000. Nimitz would later become one of the signatories of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender; the document which outlined the conditions of Japanese surrender at the end of WW2.
By 1955 Imperial had become well established in the auto-industry, and while they would never become a household name the way Cadillac already had, Chrysler was always ahead of the competition when it came to the underlying quality and engineering prowess of their cars. By 1949 Imperial had become the first company in the world to offer disc brakes on their cars. In 1951 the Imperial was one of the first cars to receive the Hemi-head V8. In 1952 Chrysler had designed the three Chrysler Imperial Parade Phaetons, one of which was later used to transport the Apollo 11 astronauts during the celebrations that followed the moon landing in 1969. The 1954 Imperial still holds the record for widest production car ever.*
In 1955 Chrysler decided to make it more clear to consumers that Imperial was something truly special, by separating it entirely from the Chrysler Brand. Now, instead of the cars being called Chrysler Imperials, they were simply Imperials.
The 1955 Imperial Crown was such a special car that when China wanted a state car of their own to replace their old Soviet fleet they initially simply rebodied an Imperial to create the Hongqi CA72 prototype. The 1950s Imperial internals were so much more reliable and well engineered than anything the state-funded Hongqi could come up with, that they would simply continue producing them until the 80s.
One of the major factors that had contributed to the excellence of the 1950s imperials was a new designer who had started working at Chrysler in 1949, Virgil Exner. He had designed some of the most beautiful cars in the world during the mid-to-late 50s, and looked poised to remain a powerhouse of the car design industry for the sixties as well. By the end of 1962, however, he had been responsible for some of the most odious car designs in all of history, or so the popular story goes. In actuality the higher-ups at Chrysler at the time had heard through the grapevine that some of their competitors would be downsizing their cars. So even though Vergil Exner (who was recovering from a heart attack at the time) disagreed with the idea, the higher-ups had downsized the designs anyway, and in the process ruined them. It later turned out that the competitors weren't planning to downsize their cars, and nobody wanted Chrysler's small and repulsively ugly cars. So nobody bought them. Chrysler decided that Exner, despite him being against the ideas that had gone so wrong for them, would be their scapegoat. He was promptly fired.
This left Chrysler with a problem. Who would they get to replace Exner? Despite the image that Chrysler executives had painted for him, in reality, he had been one of the previous decade's greatest car designers.
Chrysler settled on Elwood Engel as their choice. Elwood had started his career as studying under the legendary Harley Earl (responsible for the highly influential Buick Y-Job and tail fins on American luxury cars), before going on to work at Ford where he was responsible for the design that led to the Lincoln Continental's 1956 revival after an eight year hiatus, and probably saving the brand.
The Imperial in 1964 was the first pure Elwood Engel design. It was an instant classic and earned Imperial its second best sales year ever.
The '64 Imperial also earned high praise for its very good handling ability, something not expected for what was the largest non-limousine series-production car in the world at the time. In 1966 the legendary 440 V8 was made standard on all Imperials and this continued until 1975.
It was in 1967 that the Imperial really came into its own. Switching from the heavier body on chassis design of older Imperials to a lighter more advanced and cheaper to manufacture unibody design along with years of ahead-of-the-game suspension engineering led to an under-appreciated masterstroke by Chrysler.
In 1967-68 for only one year Imperial offered a rare and sought-after option on the Imperial Crown Coupe known as the Mobile Director. This option allowed for the front seat to swivel and face the rear and also included a desk and light, for said swivelled seat's occupant to use.
For 1969 Imperial released their last great car. The 1969-73 Imperial had a series of early innovations and stand-out accomplishments. In '69, they had sequential turn signals. In '71, they were the first cars in America to be fitted with 4-wheel ABS. In '72, two black Imperials were bought by the U.S. Secret Service, and soon after were transferred to presidential use and were used until 1981. The 1973 Imperial still holds the record for longest post-war, non-limousine, 4-door production car ever made*.
Unfortunately, the Imperial introduced to replace the '73 car was not an improvement. The 70s oil crisis hit the smaller Chrysler Corporation harder than the larger GM or Ford, and Chrysler could simply not justify continuing to build such an opulent vehicle. The 74-75 Imperial at least managed to maintain some of the marque's former glory. While the majority of American cars in the mid 70s had looks that could generously be described as highly controversial, the Imperial could still probably be described as good-looking. Despite Chrysler's best efforts, however, 1975 was essentially the last year of the Imperial.
There were brief, ill-fated efforts in 1981-83 and 1990-93 to revive the brand, and an Imperial concept car in 2006, but none of these were ever fated to get off the ground, largely because all of these cars were, to put it lightly, very awful.
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*This article was written in 2023.​