The Early Years 

Is there a grander name than Imperial? Appearing on a half dozen cars during the automobile's earliest years, only one, the Imperial Motor Company of Jackson, MI, saw production reach even 2-digits. Its owners sold their plant to join in the founding of Huppmobile. The automotive moniker of nobility lay dormant for more than a decade, as the imperial courts of Europe began to fall. Imperial would return in 1924, this time to highlight a luxury package for an advanced new performance car called the Chrysler. There it would remain, atop the Chrysler lineup for the next 70 years. 

By 1926, Imperial had graduated from trim level to a distinct car line called the Chrysler Model E80.  The numeral 80 represented its top speed. (Ah, the days when luxury cars had alphanumeric names that actually meant something) The 92hp six-cylinder engine was considered quite potent in the day. It propelled one Imperial on a record-breaking endurance run from Denver to Kansas City. Despite less than a third of the route being paved, the big Chrysler covered the 700-mile journey in 13 hours and averaged 52mph

Beautiful Beast of the Roaring Twenties

The L Series Imperial Six bowed in 1929. While the L was longer and heavier that the E, it was also sleeker and less bulky looking. It was a lot more powerful, too, carrying a larger 112hp six-cylinder engine. A version of this car propelled Chrysler to a 3-4 finish at LeMans that year, and a 2nd place a few months later at Spa. 

The L-80’s fine proportions and potent mechanicals drew some of the best coach builders like Locke and LeBaron to create gorgeous custom bodies that gave grand visual expression to the Imperial’s powerful and purposeful engineering. Imperial was beginning to make a case for a place among America’s automotive aristocracy. It would take one more step up, however, for the young marque to stand shoulder to shoulder with the finer cars of the day like Packard, Cadillac and Stutz.

Royalty in Proletariat Times

The stock market crash of October 1929 was devastating. But the relatively new automobile industry had survived such catastrophes before. It got through The Panic of 1907 that wiped out many early start-ups. It endured The Depression of 1920-21 that laid waste to a number of established makes. After both these disasters, the industry came roaring back, and then continued on to new heights. Industry leaders like Walter P. Chrysler, were to be forgiven then for believing that this one would follow a similar pattern. All would be rosy again in a year or two, and they would be ready for the ensuing boom. This was the prevailing mindset as the design was being finalized for the grandest Imperial of them all.

The 1931 Imperial Model CG was of Olympian stature, a boldface exclamation on the Roaring Twenties out of which it emerged. Even though the CG was enormous, it wore its bulk with grace.  The new Imperial’s long hood stretched over much of a 145-inch wheelbase, accented by sweeping fenders and low beltline. That long low bonnet served a purpose beyond looks, draping itself over a magnificent new 384 cu in straight-eight engine. Some of Imperial’s peers were offering twelve or even sixteen cylinders. Walter Chrysler, being a conservative man, deemed eight as enough. Seeing as his company’s “Red Head” eight, made silky-smooth with 9 main bearings, could propel the 5,000lb car to over 100mph, it seems he was right. And, when a car looked as good and drove as well as this Imperial, one lost track of the cylinder count. 

The CG and the slightly revised CL Imperials of 1931-33, especially the Le Baron bodied roadsters, epitomized the look of the classic era, and are recognized as such by the ­­­Association of American Classic Automobiles (AACA). At the 1979 Concours d‘Elegance at Pebble Beach, America’s premier gathering of classics, a 1931 Imperial Model CG Le Baron Dual Cowl Phaeton owned by Jerry Jensen won Best in Show. A 1932 Imperial Model CL Le Baron Speedster, built originally for Walter Chrysler Jr., also won the coveted trophy in 1991 for owner Sam Mann.

Gazing at pictures of the grand Imperial Roadsters of the early thirties conjures up memories of the early-70s bedroom walls of pubescent boys, including this writer. Had we been born 40 years earlier, images of this car would have hung proudly alongside Duesenberg SJs and Auburn Speedsters, instead of those Ferrari Daytonas, Citroen SMs and Lamborghini Miuras. 

The Airflow Encounters Turbulance

As it turns out, the optimists of 1930, predicting economic revival around the corner, were wrong. The Great Depression dragged on. The Imperials of the classic era, while prized today, found few buyers in those dark days of the early thirties. The mood of the nation had turned away from opulent displays of wealth. Those who still had the money to buy fine cars, sought less extravagant expressions of wealth and power. So the completely redesigned 1934 Chrysler Imperial Airflow was made to be imposing without being ostentatious. It was among the purest expressions ever of the art of engineering. The Imperial Airflow’s industrial inspired art deco shape was like nothing else on the road. Aerodynamic design, unit-body construction, interior packaging, its “firsts” were almost too numerous to count. The Airflow was superior to its rivals in ride, roominess, handling, performance and fuel economy.

As it often happens with advanced designs, the Airflow was heralded by automotive engineers and journalists, but rejected in the marketplace. The public did not appear to be ready yet for such and extraordinary leap into the future. While the Airflow was a superbly engineered car, it quickly became clear that it failed to reflect the tastes of the general public. Acting equally quickly, Chrysler hired noted carrossier designer Raymond Dietrich in late-1934 to head up a nascent Art & Colour department. Dietrich’s first assignment was to design a new grill for the Airflow that would be more palatable to depression-era buyers.

 A Return to the Classics

Walter P. Chrysler retired in 1937, leaving his company in the hands of his hand-picked successor and fellow engineer, K.T. Keller. With the Airflow experiment deemed a failure, Keller made sure Imperials and all other Chrysler products remained safely in the realm of convention. Ray Dietrich’s late-thirties cars were intelligently engineered, beautifully built and conservatively attractive. 

By 1940, the Imperial name was reserved exclusively for long wheelbase sedans and limousines. For the next decade these stately cars were designed to be driven by liveried chauffeurs, rather than their owners. 

Frozen in Time

Ray Dietrich left Chrysler in 1940, just as work was beginning on the new Imperials for ‘42s. Dietrich had grown frustrated with Chrysler’s engineering and manufacturing men, who had proved unwilling to yield control of their car’s look. Thus, the 1942 Imperial took absolutely no chances. Within a few months of its debut, all civilian automobile production ceased in February 1942. It would not resume for 3½ years. When cars again became available to the public, it was in the midst of a post-war seller’s market. It made no financial sense to invest in new models when people would happily pay top dollar for a warmed over design. Imperial would remain unchanged for a further 3½ years, before a redesign was completed in late-1949.

And when it did appear, that new Imperial elicited a lustful yawn. Sure, there were a few mechanical advances. This Imperial was the first American car (along with the Crosley Hot Shot sports car) to offer 4-wheel disc brakes. A 1952 update carried with it Chrysler’s first high compression V8 engine, that was the most advanced in the industry. Unfortunately, the car’s frumpy looks gave no clue to the marvels that lay beneath the skin. Chrysler design had become frozen in time.

Imperial Stands Alone

Chrysler president K.T. Keller is often faulted for presiding over 12 years of design atrophy. The criticism is probably deserved. Give him credit, however, for also igniting the metamorphosis that likely saved his firm from ruin. Before stepping aside in 1950, he hired two men who would transform Chrysler into a modern post-war auto company. 

 New president, Lester L. (Tex) Colbert set about modernizing the corporate structure, using industry leader General Motors as a template. As part of Coldbert’s restructuring, Imperial was spun off from the Chrysler Division, making it a separate high-end marque, and a worthy competitor to Cadillac and Packard. 

 Virgil M. Exner, former Pontiac and Studebaker designer, was brought in to run a newly created Advanced Design Studio. Over the next three years Exner created a series of concepts he called Idea Cars, that would show the future path of Chrysler design. While they were similar in concept to the dream cars of General Motor’s Motorama, Exner’s beauties were more than just dreams. They were built on fully drivable chassis and powered by potent new V8 engines. Journalists could not only ogle them on rotating stands, they could take them on a spin and report their exciting findings.  The Idea Car’s purpose was not only to whet the public’s appetite, but because these cars were built on existing Chrysler platforms, they demonstrated to the conservative engineers what could be achieved with a little imagination. 

The work of Colbert and Exner came to fruition in the fall of 1954. It was the most comprehensive remaking of a car line in automobile history. Every one of Chrysler’s now five makes was completely redesigned. They had new bodies, chassis and drivetrains. They were collectively called the “Forward Look.” It wasn’t hype. Overnight, Chrysler went from industry laggard to leader of the pack. At the top of that lineup was the glorious 1955 Imperial.

Ex wasn’t finished. Two years later he once again set Detroit on its head. “The New Look of Motion” would lay the foundation for the look of the full sized American cars for the next 20 years. With a redesigned suspension and frame, it was now possible to lower the hood and beltline, opening the floodgates on longer, lower, wider. But the element that had everyone talking in 1957 was at the rear. From the near midpoint of the car graceful wings begin to form, gently spreading outward as they rise to the sky. Every line, every surface of the long low body takes the eye on a sensuous journey into flight. 

In the late 40s, shortly after the first jet airplanes captured the American imagination, the jet age of automobile styling began. Detroit’s designers began to give their land-bound vessels the illusion of flight.  With Chrysler’s New Look of Motion, the jet age had reached its zenith. Exner’s Imperial was its grandest expression. That such bulk could be made to look so graceful, so ready to take flight, was truly a triumph of design. But the trouble with zeniths is that once reached, there is no place to go but down. 

 General Motors was caught off guard by Chrysler’s stunning sculptures in steel. The General launched a crash program to redesign of its full sized car line. Anticipating both the jet age and its tail fins to continue to soar, GM went all in in the 1959 Cadillac. So, while the ’57-58 Imperials looked like a rocket powered air yacht soaring out of the clouds, the ’59-60 Cadillac looked cartoonish with its absurdly tall appendages, something beyond power, grace and agility, and into the abyss of wretched excess.

Over the Top

The 1955 Forward Look turned Chrysler Corporation around. The 1957 New Look of Motion thrust it into the future. It may have been too much to ask Ex for a hat trick. The 1960 Imperial, with its drooping eyelids and flaccid smile, resembled a stuffed and satisfied restaurant patron who has had an extensive sampling from the wine cellar. Wretched excess had arrived at Highland Park.

In 1961, the volume Chrysler brands made a switch to unit-body construction. The Imperial division, however, stayed with the sweet isolation from the road that only a body-on-frame can provide. The ’61 Imperial was indeed a throwback, with concave face panel and floating headlamps, it was Virgil Exner’s fullest expression of his passion for the classic era of the 1930s. A poor reception in the marketplace also made this Ex’s last expression of any kind at the Chrysler Corporation.

Sixties Super Hero

By 1963, Ex was two years gone. His signature tail fins had come to look like they had been assaulted with chainsaws and soldering irons They were now plucked stubby remnants of those once soaring wings. Imperial looked like some strange missing link between species. 

In fact, it was. The 1964 Imperial’s new sharply creased body rode on the same body-on-frame chassis as the ’63.  It was also the first production car from Chrysler’s new design chief, Elwood Engle. While with Ford, Engle created the iconic 1961 Continental. He was lured away after being passed over for the top spot at Ford. This, despite having penned the most striking new car since Virgil Exner’s ‘57s. Engle brought with him to Chrysler a fondness for angular lines, leaving the ’64 Imperial open to ridicule for being merely a Chrysler-ized Continental.  A closer look, however, reveals a complex design, a series of trapezoidal shapes that form an overall look that is at once conservative and cutting edge. The Engle Imperial also beautifully incorporates modern interpretations of tow of his predecessor’s three signature elements; the split grill of the ’55 Imperial and the faux spare tire bulge of the ’57. Tailfins, however, where now a thing of the past.

The Engle Imperial was in just about every kid’s garage during the late sixties, even if our versions didn’t have a 350hp wedge head V8. Corgi Toys of the U.K. must have made a million of them.

At about the same time as Corgi was releasing its little boy’s dream car in die cast, another Imperial was cast in the role of (in this writer’s opinion) the Coolest TV Car Ever. ABC television’s The Green Hornet was a campy crime fighting show that featured Van Williams as a playboy media mogul with a secret identity. His assistant and chauffer, Kato, was played by martial arts star, Bruce Lee, who really put the “kick” in sidekick. But the real star of the show was the Green Hornet’s black green pearl 1966 Crown Imperial. It was customized at a then cost of $50,000 by Dean Jeffries, with rockets hidden in the headlamps and a launch-able flying video/audio surveillance device that today we would call a drone. The show lasted just 26 episodes, but somehow made it to syndication. There it seared the Imperial into the minds of 10-year old boys everywhere as America’s baddest car.

Another Imperial that made it to the small screen in the sixties, though it did so 40 years after the fact. Mad Men was a retro-era drama from Lion’s Gate Television that, in seven seasons, carries us though 1960s world of Madison Avenue. Like the Green Hornet’s Britt Reid, Mad Men’s Don Drapper also carries a secret identity, though it is of a very different variety. He also drove an Imperial, too. There is something about this car that says sinister with style.

Miniscule sales did not justify Imperial continuing with a unique chassis. So, for the 1967 redesign it was switched to a similar unit-body platform as mainline Chryslers, albeit stretched 3 inches ahead of the A-pillar, and with unique front and rear clips. The styling was cleaner and more elegant than contemporary Cadillacs or Lincolns, though not that different from the Chryslers on which they were based.  Imperial did have one noteworthy option not found on any other car. The Mobile Director interior package available on the Crown Imperial Coupe featured a front passenger seat that swiveled around to greet rear passengers, or a folding work table. As it turns out, traveling backwards at 75mph is an acquired taste. Only 81 Mobile Directors were sold. 

The Fuselage Imperials

A sleek new body was introduced on all Chrysler’s fill sized cars in 1969. It was called the Fuselage Look, for the way the body shell wrapped around the interior like the fuselage of an airplane. At over 19 feet in length, the new Imperial was nearly as long as a jet liner. Retractable headlights were hidden beneath a wide horizontal grill and flanked by vertical signal lights. A one-piece chrome bumper framed the grill and seemed to melt into the sheet metal, giving the car a look of sinister cool. Too bad the Green Hornet TV show didn’t survive to 1969.

As was the case in 1957, and again in 1964, the 1969 Imperial’s bold and elegant new look was made less so in each successive year of obligatory freshening. When it was redesigned in 1973, the Imperial was nothing more than a Chrysler with a waterfall grill. The division’s reason for being had ceased to exist. The following year Imperial was merged into the Chrysler-Plymouth division. Then, after selling just 8,800 copies, the 1975 Chrysler Imperial simply became the 1976 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham.

A Brief Return to Glory

Imperial name was gone, but it wasn’t forgotten. The eighties saw the storied name remerge, affixed to a unique new model atop the Chrysler line. At the dawn of the nineteen-eighties the corporation was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and going hat in hand to Washington for loan guarantees. Product development funds were in short supply.  Taking a page from Studebaker’s game plan of an eariler generation, fresh-looking new Chrysler models had to be conjured by stretching or slicing existing platforms. Designers did quite a good job visually differentiating their new Imperial from the Chrysler Cordoba on which it was based, which was itself derived from the Volare/Aspen midsize platform first seen in 1976. 

As for Imperial’s look; in the confusing aftermath of the crazy mixed up seventies, Detroit somehow came upon the design theme of what can only be described as “retro-awkward,” as the new look of luxury. This bizarre trend began with the bustle-back trunk of the 1980 Cadillac Seville. It blessedly ended with the graceless 1982 Lincoln Continental. In between came the 1981 Imperial. The only 2-door in the group, the new Imperial had sharply creased lines similar to the Seville, but to this writer’s eye it was better proportioned. The less said about the Continental the better.

Lee Iacocca had come over from Ford in 1979 to lead the Chrysler Corporation through its latest round of financial troubles. He brought with him his gift for turning ordinary sedans into extraordinarily profitable coupes (See Mustang and Mark III) He also brought his friendship with Frank Sinatra, who lent his name to a special edition Imperial that was painted the color of the famous crooner’s baby blues. Only 11,000 Imperials were sold in its three-year run. It would not be surprising if this 80s-cool coupe were to soon be a dream come true for the car collector on a budget, especially one of the 148 “Sinatra” editions.

An Inglorious End for a Glorious Marque

The Imperial name disappeared after 1983, only to return yet again seven years later. It needn’t have bothered. The 1990 Chrysler Imperial looked like it had been captured by enemy agents, taken to a dark basement where it was systematically beaten, tortured and starved into a grotesque heap of mangled flesh. Hyperbole perhaps, unless you are someone who loved those Imperials of days past. This thing they now called Imperial was nothing more than the ubiquitous K-car, stretched here and there, and adorned with tasteless ornamentation. It was a cruel joke that the once proud name should now appearing on a glorified econo-box. 

Chrysler sold 37,000 K-perials from 1990-93. Each carried a $10,000 profit margin (at least they did before discounting…which was plentiful.) That added cash no doubt contributed to the development of Imperial’s spiritual successor, the 1994 Chrysler LHS. This car was strikingly beautiful in a thoroughly modern way. It would have worn the Imperial name with honor, had the storied moniker not been soiled beyond resurrection. Once you’d seen the Imperial K-beast, you could never un-see it.

Sources and Further Reading

Books

Chrysler & Imperial 1946-1975, The Classic Postwar Years, by Richard M. Langworth. Motorbooks (Osceola, WI 1976)

Articles

Imperial: Dowager Queen of Chrysler Corporation by Lee B Hippensteele. Antique Automobile, May-June 1970

1931 Chrysler CG Imperial Le Baron Roadster by Jack Woodward, Motor Trend, March 1973

Imperial Independence  by Thomas A DeMauro, Hemmings Classic Car, February 2015

Chrysler’s Crown King  by David Traver Adolphus, Hemmings Classic Car, September 2011

Chrysler Imperial: 1981-83  by Bob Merlis. Automobile, July 2014

Internet

www.Allpar,com The source for everything Chrysler

www.Imperialclub.com  Perhaps the best site for any make-specific club