For all that America prides itself on its individualism, the most distinctive American works of art have always seemed to me to be group projects: musicals such as Oklahoma! , and movies such as The Magnificent Ambersons , and—it seems worth mentioning, now that we’re reaching the end of the U.S. auto industry—two group productions from the Chrysler Corporation: the Chrysler Building and the 1962 Imperial:
(Source: Imperial Club )
In the wonderful Car Lust blog, Anthony Cagle notes that, for American cars, 1962 was a very good year . Maybe the best year ever (at least for those of us who managed to grow up and get over a hunger for the muscle cars that didn’t reach their peak till later in the 1960s).
Along the way, he mentions Ford’s famous suicide-door Lincoln Continental as the premier luxury car of 1962, as it surely was: so much so that Chrysler would hire the designer away from Ford to reinvent the Imperials of 1963 and 1964. For that matter, the Imperials typically had sales of about 10 percent of the Lincoln’s.
(Source: Automotive Mileposts )
But I still think those 1962 Imperials had something special about them: the split grill strangely matched with the free-floating headlights, the gun-sight taillights, the back seat so big that Mrs. Banker could host a tea-party in it, the LeBaron coachbuilding, the leaning into the wind of the whole design, the muted but still present tailfins.
The boxy Lincolns were the future, fully joined; the forward-swept Imperials—the longest production car of the time—were only halfway around the curve, splitting the difference between the designs of the 1950s and the designs of the 1960s. Here’s a rule, maybe: That halfway state can produce the worst visual designs for a car, combining the failed elements of two eras, and it can also produce the best, combining the success of two eras. Like many of the strangely beautiful cars of 1962, the Imperial was a mishmash—but a mishmash that succeeded.
(Source: Allpar.com )
The Imperial was a uniquely American art form, produced with a profit-motive and made by many hands. Besides, it worked—very well, indeed.
(Source: Serious Wheels )
