1957 Chrysler Imperial vs Cadillac 62 Dealer Promo Film Mopar is a registered trademark of Chrysler Group LLC. Master Tech series training materials are the property of Chrysler Group LLC and are used with permission. MyMopar.com
I went to one of these dealer sales schools back in '70s. They taught us to ask confirming questions like the ones on this film strip. "Can you see the difference?" "Wouldn't you say that, ....etc?" "Wouldn't you feel safer....?"
Dad had one,he bought it in Singapore and had it shipped to England. It was beautiful in two tone blue and it was right hand drive. We went camping in the Forrest of dean and the rear axle broke. For two weeks we had nothing to eat except spam, tinned tomatoes and peaches. Wonderful spam spam spam spam.
Marko Antonio One would have to be relatively well off in '57 for a Buick. Imperial competed with Cadillac and The Chrysler New Yorker competed with Buick. Buick was still a pretty high end line in the 1950s, A 1958 Buick Limited actually cost MORE then a 1958 Cadillac Series 62. They Plymouth buyers cross shopped Chevy and Ford, A Buck guy looked at Chrysler, Hi spec DeSotos or Hi Spec Mercurys.
@Marko Antonio You failed to notice the exclusion of the one fine quality auto that no manufacture would dare to compare, the Continental MK II ... .... crickets. 😎
Buick was a high line car but can not blame you younger kids for not knowing this. Buick was one step below Cadillac and some models were right with it or above in price and luxury.@@WAQWBrentwood
+ted marshall I disagree with that from personal experience. I know the Chrysler Imperial I rode in was a 1974 but the Imperial I rode in rode like a cloud and float like riding on air.
You laugh, but up until that point they had to build them high because the president of Chrysler at the time thought men should be able to wear their hats in the car.
Yes they were banned in the demolition derby's because they crushed everything and kept going. Imperials used bigger axles drive shafts and every other suspension part was extra heavy duty and only used exclusively on Imperials.
Oh what a hero. Geesh! You shouldn't be putting any good automobile out in a derby you imbecile, your the reason why they are lacking more and more everyday. But don't tell the fool that sugar is sweet, let him figure it out when the sugar is lacking at a shortage and price of it goes up by 7 marks.!
@@artdecotimes2942 when they were being wrecked in the derbies of the 70s and 80s nobody gave a shit about a 64 Imperial....most people still dont...don't be a tool....
Greetings from a very proud owner of a 1957 Chrysler Imperial Sedan from Switzerland. The Imperial is just great! The technique is quite advanced for this time.
The Newyorker was almost twice the price of the Imperial, the purpose was to show you that you get similar performance in a car that costs as much as a Cadillac 62.
Cool this is a real story about a Chrysler Imperial and Cadillacs. My family are all Farmers out of North Dakota and all of them Drive Cadillacs except one. He he had a Chrysler Imperial and would get ribbed about it from time to time. His answer was he liked it because it was the only car that could pull a tractor out of a Slough/swamp.
The look of the '57 Caddy is the least of my favorites of the 50's Caddys. The '55 is my favorite. As for suspension, I have owned and ridden in Mopars that had torsion bars suspension, and they feel like they hug the road better.
Yeah 57 looked too much like a bel air with lipstick, but the old mopar ass did cherry pick the lowest trip Cadillac to compare lol. Complete scam artists.
@@brettknoss486 the Packard suspension was much more sophisticated than the Mopar system. It essentially used fore-aft torsion bars as anti-sway bars to prevent dive and squat. In the Mopar the torsion bar simply replaces the coil or leaf spring. There's no performance difference, just packaging.
I'll take a '57 Chrysler 300 C, thank you very much! Although I own an Imperial, I had several Cadillacs. They sure had character. But most bought them for the name rather than comparing them to the better engineered Imperial,
This isn't a "film", it's a filmstrip. Way cheaper to make, way easier to show. And since this was only going to be relevant / useful for the 1957 model year, saving money on its production was smart.
I grew up in the 12 Mile & Van Dyke area, and passed the Tech Center all the time. Interesting to see the Mound Rd gate as it was in 1956! And I'd know those railroad tracks anywhere...
"This is something the luxury-type car owner appreciates; a really spacious, convenient to use luggage compartment." I think the segment of society called mobsters might also appreciate that...
Very interesting and entertaining, including the comments. Thanks for digging this up and posting. As for me,I'll stick to my Packard-baker. (No Lincoln)🙂
One thing thats not mentioned during the wheel and tyre combination was chryslers saftey rim with the saftey bead that stops the tyre bead going into the rim center and coming off and no other car had this feature until 1965 and chrysler invented the safety rim about 1940.
@@MisterMikeTexas Subjective. And many out there find Caddy's tacked-on fins to be not as pretty as Mopar's integral ones (at least from '57-59, before the Imps got just as cartoony as the Caddys).
Fun video. Vivid memories of my grandmother's '57 Imperial. My five year old self remembers a really great car with many buttons to push and much chrome trim. I recall that my grandmother missed it after my grandparents replaced it with a '61 those were fins!) Preferences are hard to predict. My dad ended up owning several Cadillacs, as did I. Neither of us ever owned a big Mopar. I am now quite happy with my Chevy pickup.
Great video. I miss being able to tell the difference in car makes. Now they all look like they came from the same design studio. When I was looking for my first car in the late 70's I had the opportunity to pick up a '64 Imperial for around $500. My dad vetoed the idea and wouldn't budge from his position. Never got a good reason. I then ended up driving a '46 Chevy pickup grandpa gave me.
I went through sales training at a Ford dealership in 1973. They used film strips and 33-1/3 records to do this type of training. Every time you heard the beep they would advance the film strip for a new picture. This went on for two weeks 6 days a week, after you were through you knew the wheel base, interior leg room, trunk cubic feet and all kinds of facts. Not just Ford, Mercury Lincoln but all the competition from GM and Chrysler products. You were expected to use these facts to help sale against the competition.
"the going away look." "these men leaned over backward" "the front ends want to dive but the rear ends want to jump" "the amount of rear-end squat" "wouldn't you say there's a difference in squat?" A 1957 disco dance competition.
I'm getting a '57 Saratoga here soon the Lady and her husband bought it new in late '56. Can't wait to get it back on the road. I also know where there is an Imperial but oh does she need work.
Notice the test Imperial has single headlights, not the dual lights touted earlier in the filmstrip. Duals were not legal in all states in 1957 so they made them with both.
The Cadillac was tested in the cold, when the springs were stiffer and would cause the problems starting at TIME 4:37. The Imperial was tested in warmer weather, which was more sympathetic to spring action.
Back in the day, would have loved that Chrysler dual quad 392" Hemi engine in a '64 Chevelle convertible... candy apple red... white interior and top...
I love these old videos, but the Chryslers as tested weigh 4300 pounds, they used hardtops. The 62 series Cadillac sedan weighs 5000 to 5200 pounds. The Cadillac was carrying a hemi engine in the passenger seat! No wonder this Mopar test reigned supreme! 😂
I think when a car’s headlights are located within the grille, it tends to give the car more of an excited expression that could be of almost any expression, depending on how you look at it. And the Imperial’s tailfins are probably safer than the Cadillac’s, since they appear to be a bit lower, and if you look, closely, they actually look less pointy, as well. So yeah, I slightly prefer the Imperial’s design.
Its a wonder anyone bought any Cadillacs that year with incredible Mopars right there to beat the tar out of them in every test! Even in 1957, it was simply MOPAR OR NO CAR.😁
@Christian Yes, the OHV V-8 engines were very nice... Especially the Chrysler products... Chhysler had the HEMISPHERICAL combustion chamber heads in several of their cars back then... Standard equipment in several cases...
A bygone era, when designers/engineers still had a imagination, to be fair with that 30mph railroad track comparison, MOST people who slow down to BELOW 30mph before going over tracks where the road dipped-down on the other side.
It's crazy how much the imperials front reminds me of a third generation bel air. It's crazy that cars were radical redesigned every 3 sometimes every year
Imperial never had it's own engine line separate from other Chrysler products, which led to it always being considered the top level Chrysler rather than it's own luxury make. This persisted even when Chrysler went unibody and Imperial remained body on frame. Due to middling sales they finally just merged it back into the Chrysler lineup. The 75 Imperial and the 76-78 New Yorker Brougham are the same cars.
I grew up near the Chrysler proving Grounds. I remember three or four cars all the same model and all painted white would come barreling down our road and my dad told me they were road tests for the new models coming out.
I wish I could be living n that current time and access to all those classic Chrysler’s. Not just that, but America was clean and strong and organized. Now days, America some places are like a 3rd world country. Look at Skid Row L.A. back then that area was a beautiful boulevard for cruising and having parties and it was safe.
God damn it! Car from 57 has adjustable defrosters! 50 years later and there are still cars where you can't see a thing because of steamed up windows...
This seemed to work for 1957....big jump in sales for Imperial, vs loss in sales for Cadillac. BUT......that was short-lived....they dropped by 57% in recession-year 1958, vs only 17% for Cadillac. So apparently they missed some things in the comparison: 1956 Sales: Cadillac 154,577, Imperial 10,684 1957 Sales: Cadillac 146,841, Imperial 37,583 1958 Sales: Cadillac 121,778, Imperial 16,133
Train tracks do save lives, with the dragging of your new Cadillac bumpers.....Chrysler unfortunately does not offer this...lol.....thanks for posting video......miss these type of auto comparison .....
This is a very convincing film. It makes you want to go out and buy... a Chrysler New Yorker! The Cadillac is already a behemoth, and yet they're bragging at 1:56 that the Imperial is 8 inches longer? WTF! (The Cadillac's wheelbase was actually half an inch longer. The Imperial's extra length was all in the rear overhang.) I do know that Cadillac was doing something right, something that Imperial and Lincoln could not easily duplicate, because year after year Cadillac consistently outsold both Lincoln and Imperial, often selling more than both rivals together. Clearly it wasn't just styling, though that was important. In 1957 the Imperial being 2.5 inches lower than the Cadillac was a big deal. Imperial arguably got a two year jump on Cadillac in 1957. I'm sure GM would hate to admit it, but Virgil Exner's "Forward Look" styling greatly influenced the styling direction of the entire industry. (But note that Imperial's "Continental" spare tire styling on the rear deck was a reinterpretation of FoMoCo's 1956 Continental Mark II. Cadillac declined to follow that particular folly.) And I don't think GM's engineering was enough better to make GM cars noticeably more reliable, though they were a bigger company and could afford to spend more on R&D. And it wasn't exclusive features. If one car company invented something that was a clear improvement, all the others would get something similar within a year or two. I suspect it was something more subtle: parts availability. GM had more parts stocked in its distribution warehouses and could get parts to dealers with less frequent backorders, thus noticeably faster, meaning GM cars had less downtime due to quicker repairs. In part they could afford to do this because more parts were shared between GM brands than either Ford or Chrysler. As noted in this film, the Cadillac 62 shared a platform with Buick. Imperial is claiming that their "exclusive" platform is somehow better, but the practical reality is that it was a rarely used platform and it didn't pay to stock a lot of parts for it in the regional warehouses. If your Imperial broke down, your car was inoperative and you were without transportation until they sent parts from the factory warehouse in Detroit. Ford and Chrysler also switched suppliers more frequently than GM, and often replacement parts were wrong and didn't fit and would have to be reordered. Different parts in the same model run also contributed to higher stocking costs for complete coverage, or alternatively excessive backorders due to incomplete coverage. Such delays were very noticeable because they greatly inconvenienced the customer.
CHRYSLER cars had a bas reputation in the 60's, because of rusting. Although, I consider the '55 DeSoto as the best designed car of the 50's. After '56, CHRYSLER went crazy with fins, and extreme styling.
I tried to read through everyone's post, so not to duplicate a thought, but I find it very interesting that they used the Imperial, a top of the line Chrysler, but the Cadillac was more the base model 62 Series. A 1957 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special is the same size as the Imperial but has a 133" wheelbase, and the Imperial only has 129 inch wheel base. The Fleetwood would also be much more luxurious for the interior as well.
A 1957 Imperial was NOT a Chrysler, top of the line or otherwise. It was its own separate make. Pricewise, featurewise, and quality of the materials were pretty much comparable between the two cars except Imperial didn't have a model comparable to the Eldorado.
A 60 special was awfully close to a limo, so its handling of railroad tracks would not likely be BETTER than the Imperial. Long wheelbase makes a better ride, but it looks like the torsion bar front suspension does a better job over the tracks.
I love this film....but one thing...it wasn't a Chrysler at this point, it was the Imperial Crown or the Imperial LeBaron, they weren't using the Chrysler name anymore, not since 1955
The clip art is hilarious! The Chryslers have 30 cubic inches over Cadillac beginning in 1957 (392 vs. 365) and are using the first version of the three-speed torque converter while Cadillac is using the re-designed Jetaway Hydra-Matic--Cadillac won't get a larger engine until 1959 (390) and a new transmission until 1964.
TorqueFlite tranny has 5:1 (2 x 2.5:1) off the line compared to Hydramatic 4:1 as the video shows... but 30' out the TorqueFlite has dropped to 2:50:1 as the torque converter drops from 2:1 to 1:1... Whereas the HydraMatic is still at 4:1 until the shift into 2nd gear... TorqueFlite is 3 gears forward... HydraMatic is 4 gears forward... Chryslers have the bigger engine and would have been even quicker with a Hydramatic tranny!... I think Chrysler and Ford/Lincoln bought GM's/Old's/Cadillac's HydraMatic tranny earlier for their biggest luxury cars...
