What Were They Thinking?: 2006 Chrysler Imperial Concept

Once in a while I do an internet search on "Imperial" or "Chrysler Imperial" and notice items mentioning a possible resurrection of the model.  Some have even appeared fairly recently, in 2014, and a few are nearly current.  If Peter De Lorenzo is even halfway correct in his many assessments of Fiat-Chrysler's state, such a reappearance any time soon -- if ever -- is doubtful.

The most tangible evidence of a new Chrysler Imperial was a 2006 concept car.  Here is what one Chrysler fan site had to say about it a few years later. It includes quotations from personnel involved in the project.

My reaction to the first photos I saw of the Chrysler Imperial Concept was: What Were They Thinking?

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First, two views of the 2005 Chrysler 300C.  This sales-success car's platform was the basis for the Chrysler Imperial Concept.

Front three-quarter view of the Concept.  Its wheelbase was three inches (about 7.6 cm) longer than the 300's, its length 17 inches (43.2 cm) longer, and its height 6 inches (15.2 cm) taller than production 300s.  My take is that the car is too massive.  Given a station wagon (break) rear end, it would work well as a luxury SUV such as we are starting to see from the likes of Bentley and Jaguar, but it fails as a sedan.  The short hood and truck-like snout are not helpful.

The Concept has no B-pillars, not even stub ones.  The curved sheet metal suggesting a rear fender begins too low, adding to the appearance (along with the reality) of bulk.

Rear three-quarter view.  The pinched, quasi-boat-tail trunk lid also helps make the car seem taller than it should be.

I doubt that a resurrected Chrysler Imperial based on this design would have sold very well.

1958 Ford La Galaxie Concept Begats Chrysler's Turbine Car

The late 1950s was a time when American car styling was at the height of one of its Baroque, (Rococo, even) periods.  The nub of this was use of jet fighters and science fiction space ships as the basis for ornamentation that was further elaborated by two and three colors paint schemes that were sometimes arbitrarily placed.

A reaction set in around 1960 when simpler designs began reaching the market.  And given the three or so years lead-time from sketchpad to production, stylists were probably thinking of simplification as early as 1957.

An example of incipient change might be the 1958 Ford Motor Company show car called La Galaxie.  It included some jet plane detailing, but lacked tail fins and a three-tone paint-job.

There are few decent photos of La Galaxie on the internet.  Some of the ones shown below had to be cleaned up, and still aren't top-drawer quality.

Headlight assemblies resemble jet fighter air intakes.  But the rest of the details seen from this angle are not from that source of inspiration.

Viewed from the side, La Galaxie's styling is fairly clean.  Much of that is due to the simple fender line and skirted rear wheels.  Visual boredom is reduced by the character line on the rear fender area and the decorative panel straddling the front wheel opening.  Note that the angle at its aft end is echoed  by the window sill interruption and the cut of the transparent roof panel.  For some reason, I've always been fond of the side window treatment of La Galaxie even though it's not practical for notional back seat passengers.

La Galaxie's rear aspect strikes me as being more science fiction inspired than jet fighter based.  Those huge "exhaust outlets" are out of scale to the rest of the car.  The continuation of the rear fender character crease into these zones helps tie the ensemble together, however.  The reverse-angle backlight (rear window) was a detail toyed with during the 1950s.  It saw production on 1958 Lincoln Continental Mk. IIIs, for example.

This low-quality image shows La Galaxie in color.

This is Elwood Engel, the man in charge of Chrysler Corporation styling.  In the 1950s he worked at Ford.  Behind him is the 1963 Chrysler Turbine Car powered by a gas turbine engine conceptually similar to those in actual jet fighters.  Around 50 Turbine Cars were built, many intended for testing by ordinary drivers.  Most were destroyed later.

The headlight housings have a jet-intake appearance in the same spirit as those on La Galaxie.

The aft end of the Turbine Car bears even closer resemblance to La Galaxie's.  The parts of the body between the ends is similar to some Ford Thunderbirds and Continentals.  The front and rear end designs make the Turbine Car impractical for normal use -- poor front protection and inconvenient trunk access at the rear.  But the true production killer was the impracticality of gas turbine engines for automobiles.  The jet fighter styling cues are appropriate for once, given the presence of the engine.

1955 Ford Mystere Show Car

One mid-1950s Ford show car that I've never liked was the 1955 Mystere.  The name might have been inspired by the French Dassault Mystère jet fighter that first flew in 1951.  Moreover, its ornamentation includes several jet fighter motifs, as we shall see below.

The Mystere falls into the dream car / flashy concept category.  That's because it was almost entirely impractical and, with the exception of the tail fin color scheme treatment, was not predictive of future production Fords.

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1955 Ford
To set the scene, here are views of 1955-57 Fords featuring the J-shaped side trim theme also found on the Mystere.  It first appeared for the '55 model year.

1956 Ford
This is the 1956 version.  It's a bit more gracefully shaped than the 1955 version, but still is rather awkward.

1957 Ford
The best version of the theme was on '57 Fords where the aft part blends with the tail fin.  We see this on the Mystere.

General view of the 1955 Mystere dream car.  Its three-tone color scheme colors are similar to those found on 1955 production Fords.  It seems that the entire roof dome was hinged at the rear to allow it to be pivoted upward to allow passenger ingress and egress.  The air vent at the top is the only source of passenger compartment ventilation.

Note this early application of those awful quad headlights that began appearing on 1957 American cars.  Otherwise, the front design is fairly clean and sensible.  The rear fender area with the side air intake and tail fins is jet-fighter inspired as was much American car ornamentation in those days.  The intake looks functional, but I can't tell for sure from the photos.

Side view with a group of what are probably stylists involved in the Mystere project.  That's Alex Tremulis at the far right.  The color separation side trim is awkward and does not enhance the car's appearance.  It does relate to the trim on top-of-the-line '55 Fords and previews the link to canted tail fins that appeared for 1957.  The placement of the passenger compartment seems too far forward.  One reason for that is that the engine (which the Mystere actually lacked) would have been placed at the rear.

Rear view showing the jet fighter theme of fins and jet exhausts.

Color view of the rear along with a model to provide scale.

Cadillac 1954 El Camino and La Espada Show Cars

There were three Cadillac dream cars in General Motors' 1954 Motorama show.  One was a conservatively styled four-door sedan that previewed some features of Cadillac's 1957 redesign.  The other two were minor variations on a two-passenger theme.

They were the El Camino (The Road), a coupé, and the La Espada (The Sword), a convertible, their only significant difference being a top or lack thereof.

One feature they anticipated was quad headlights, something that began appearing on American cars for the 1957 model year and was nearly universal for 1958.  Another was Cadillac's 1958 rear fender design.  Otherwise, these cars were the sort of dream car jazz that was expected at Motoramas.

This is the El Camino.  It has a racy top somewhat suggestive of a jet fighter plane cockpit, the jet theme being reinforced by the tail fins.

I think that the weakest feature is those quad headlights.  But then, I hate most quad headlights.  Regardless, their housings create an awkward shape at the front of the fenders, this being at odds with the rest of the design.

Show cars are supposed to be flashy.  Even so, I would reduce the size of the tail fins and perhaps make them less pointed.  Also, I am never very fond of character features such as we see here that curve around the front of wheel openings and then extend to the rear.

I would have used single headlights in "frenched" housings linked to a character line aligned with the center or lower edge of the headlamp.  The result would be higher on the fender than the one seen here.  A consequence would be that the extruded decorative side panels would have to go -- not a bad thing either.

La Espada with Ronald Reagan at the wheel.

A glimpse of the interior.

1954 Cadillac Park Avenue Concept

The 1954 General Motors Motorama traveling cars-plus-entertainment show was particularly rich in terms of show cars / dream cars / concept cars (take your pick).

Cadillac exhibited three such cars, two of which (El Camino, La Espada) were variations on a two-passenger theme.  The other was a comparatively conservative four-door sedan, the Park Avenue.  It is the subject of this post.

The 1954 model year was when General Motors startled the buying public with completely restyled Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs.  These cars featured low hood and trunk lines (compared to previous designs) and panoramic (or wraparound) windshields.  The effect was quite futuristic at the time.

The next Cadillac redesign would be for 1957, so when the Park Avenue was conceived, 1957 styling was still somewhat in flux while the market reaction to the new '54s was being evaluated.  Even so, the Park Avenue anticipated several features found on the 1957s.

The Park Avenue was more rounded than 1954 Caddies, a feature of the '57 redesign.  1957s also saw the low hood and matching front and rear wraparound shapes.  The Park Avenue was fairly compact, something definitely not the case in 1957.

Here is a 1957 Cadillac -- a coupe, not a sedan, however.  Another Park Avenue carryover is the rear fender design.

A not-so crisp image of the Park Avenue's front.

And this is the front of a 1954 Cadillac, photo by Owls Head.  Headlight housings, upper grille shape, grille grid pattern and bumper styling are in the same spirit.  Front styling for the '57s had most of the main theme features, though details were different.

Rear three-quarter view of the Park Avenue. No rear bumper, but show cars often featured sketchy protection.  All things considered, the Park Avenue was a nice design for its time, and was nicer looking than the too-large 1957 line it anticipated.

1956 Buick Centurion Dream Car

I think the 1956 General Motors Motorama car-show-plus-entertainment extravaganza was the last of the interesting ones.  Decline was already happening, as evidenced in the mix of concept or dream cars (as they were called back then).  My favorite of that batch is the Buick Centurion; the GM web site discusses it here.

The Centurion is a mix of the practical and styling studio dream car show-off fluff.  Some features hint at future production, others are simply jazzy.  All the while, the car has styling cues that clearly identify it as a Buick.

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Buick identification is in the form of the Sweep Spear chromed strip on the side that also serves as a paint tone divider.  The car seats four, unlike many Motorama cars, giving it a practical feeling.  The fender treatment between the extreme front and rear is one that easily could appear on a near-future 1950s production car.  The windshield is doubly wrapped-around.  This will be seen on some late '50s production cars, but not in such an extreme manner towards the roof.  A nice touch is the C-pillar's rake that complements the rake of the A-pillar -- a nice, logical symmetry seen here and there when panoramic windshields were in vogue.

An impractical styling fetish that has yet to die of natural causes is the transparent roof.  I feel very sorry for that poor model at the wheel being subjected to the Miami sun and the greenhouse effect caused by the roof.  True, the windows are rolled down, but that gal surely earned her modeling fee that day.  The pickle fork front treatment seen in plan view here makes for an interesting composition, but is impractical for real-world parking conditions.  Even so, from this camera angle, the Centurion has strong, clean lines without any serious disruptions: a fine show car.

The Centurion's rear is more problematical.  The wing-like rear fenders combined with the boat-tail-cum-jet-fighter trunk is nothing but dream car flash, devoid of practicality.

A glimpse of the interior showing the rear-view TV screen.  That feature is common today thanks to miniaturizing technology, but was too bulky and costly for production use in 1956.

Here is a 1957 Buick Roadmaster four-door hardtop.  Its Sweep Spear and the A- and C-pillar angles are carried over from the Centurion (that was designed when the general form of this Buick was pretty well established).  So to some degree, the Centurion was intended to get potential buyers used to coming styling attractions.

And this is a 1960 Mercury Montclair (a cleaned-up 1959 Mercury Park Lane) also featuring complementary A- and C-pillars.  It has a compound-curve windshield, but not nearly so extreme as the Centurion's.  For 1961, Mercury dropped panoramic windshields, as did Buick that same model year.

1962 Ford Cougar Concept Car

There's hardly any internet information on Ford's 1962 Cougar concept car.  The Wikipedia entry here is typical.  The Cougar name was eventually used for many years by Ford Motor Company's Mercury brand for various lines of sporty coupes.  Before that, it was found on show cars.

The '62 Cougar is not a famous concept car, but I find it interesting.  That's partly because it appeared right after American cars had moved out of the rococo era of three-tone paint jobs, swaths of chrome trim, and elaborate tail fins.  Yet the Cougar retained touches of fantasies dreamed up the Ford's advanced styling unit back in the 1950s.

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This general view sets the scene.  Most of the images of the Cougar feature its Mercedes-Benz inspired gull-wing doors -- an impractical sports car fetish that has yet to be abandoned.

The Cougar's grille is simple and integrated with the bumper as a variety of horizontal shapes.  Headlights are hidden behind the fender caps, though its not clear how they are exposed.  (Perhaps they are not there at all and those cut lines are dummies.)  Note the wire wheels, a sporty '50s fad that was fading by 1962.  The front of the car from the cowl forward is very simple.  Side trim is a single broad, tapering chrome strip that limits the height of the front wheel opening.  The windshield wraps around to A-pillars that slant backwards, part of the trend away from vertical or forward slanting A-pillars of the 1950s.  But the windshield does not wrap upwards even though compound-curved windshields were not unknown at the time.  The result is that odd, rather small transition panel that links the windshield with the gull-wing door openings.

Side view showing the nice, long hood and fairly short (for the times) rear overhang.  The gull-wing door openings have a slant at the rear conforming to the seat slant.  There is a single lift strut mounted at the rear.  The most visually jarring feature is the tubular lump atop the fender over the rear wheel.  It distracts from the otherwise pure fender line and seems to serve only as a tail light assembly holder.  Perhaps the fender line did need some spicing up, but those lumps simply add poorly-placed clutter.  They represent a seeming holdover of Ford's advance styling group's early-1950s obsession with jet fighter and sci-fi spaceship detailing.

This rear view indicating that, aside from the tail light arrangement  the design of the car's rear is clean.  A production version would have required a higher trunk lid for reasons of practicality, however.

What Were They Thinking?: Buick's 1985 Wildcat Concept Car

General Motors' Buick Division has made considerable use of the name Wildcat over the year, as this link attests.  There were three Motorama dream car Wildcats in the mid-1950s, production Buicks with the Wildcat name in the 1960s, and finally another concept car in 1985 that is the subject of this post.

The General Motors web site has this to say about the '85 Wildcat that was developed while Irv Rybicki was in charge of GM styling.  Rybicki's production designs tended to be cautious, but this concept car was quite the opposite.  Perhaps that was because it was a pure show car and not the type of concept car intended to preview production styling features.

The '85 Wildcat was odd looking -- poorly proportioned, and its front and rear designs looked like  they belonged on the opposite ends, as will be shown below.  This was largely due to its mid-engine layout.  I saw this Wildcat at Expo 86 in Vancouver, and it did not impress me.

The Wildcat's puffy fenders and aerodynamic pretensions strike me as being characteristic of GM styling studio thinking in those days.

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The front is strongly cabover.  The curve that's not interrupted by a cowling looks like a mid-1940s fastback (if the glass is disregarded).

The rear looks more like a front: pretend the backlight is actually a 1950s style wraparound windshield.

In the best hot rod tradition, the "mill" is exposed.

This is the car's "door."  Not practical in a rainstorm.

Side view when everything is buttoned down.  I just can't help thinking that the front is at the left.

Buick Wildcat III as Predictor of 1957 Line

When it came to dream cars, I think the best General Motors Motorama years were 1953-1956.  Buick Division featured three different show cars called "Wildcat" over 1953-1955.  Each car was distinctly different from the others, so despite the same name, there was no consistent Wildcat theme.

Hemmings has an article dealing with all three here, and the General Motors historical site has this to say regarding the subject of this post, the 1955 Buick Wildcat III concept car.  My take on the Wildcat III is in the captions below.

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To set the stage, here is a photo of the 1953 Buick Wildcat I.  It's a two-passenger convertible with some styling features soon to appear on the redesigned 1954 Buick line.

The 1954 Buick Wildcat II is a sports-type car with a wheelbase two inches (49 mm) less than that of the Chevrolet Corvette that looks somewhat similar from the cowling aft.  Aside from the front bumper design (used in 1955) it did not influence styling of future production Buicks.

Unlike previous Wildcats, the 1955 Wildcat III show car could accommodate four passengers.  It was clearly more conventional than the Wildcat II.  Generally speaking, its design is pleasing, though the car's rear has some problems, as we'll discover below.

The windshield is doubly curved with a vertical A-pillar -- features not found on the upcoming 1957 Buick redesign.  The wide wheel openings would collect and display highway dirt and grime, so they too would not see production.  What did come to pass are the fender line, the design of the side Sweepspear trim and the termination angle of the rear fender.

Even though the Wildcat III was theoretically a four-passenger car, the back seat had little room for people.  The detailing on the trunk lid and rear is confused.  We find rounded bumper blobs with nearby thinly squashed oval exhaust pipe outlets that in turn have circular backup lights placed above them.  These items do not relate to one another.

Rear three-quarter view.  Items adapted for '57s include the chromed strips on the trunk lid, the aforementioned fender angle, and those large bumper stubs are the corners.

This is a 1957 Buick Roadmaster two-door hardtop.  As mentioned, the fender line and Sweepspear are like the Wildcat's.  The windshield here is a simpler curve and the A-pillars slant.

A '57 Buick Roadmaster four-door hardtop (Classic Car Auctions photo).  Its taillight assembly differs from the Wildcat's, but the fender termination angle is similar.  The bulbous bumper guards below the taillights are nearly the same shape as those on the Wildcat.  The chromed strips on the trunk lid are not inset liners as on the show car.  But they also relate to other aspects of the design -- in this case, the backlight segment separators.