Mrs. Bluberry's 1958 Imperial Page

Tom McCahill Tests the 1958 Imperial
from Mechanix Illustrated, July, 1958

me1

Tom McCahill Tests the 1958 Imperial

Click on thumb nails to get larger image

MODEL TESTED: Imperial Two-door Southampton

ENGINE: OHV V8 cyls; 392 cubic ins; 345 brake hp; 450 ft-lbs max torque; 10 to 1 compression ratio. Bore 4 ins; stroke 3.9 ins; Fuel required: Premium. Standard axle ratio: 2.93. Wheelbase 129 ins; lenghth 225.8 ins; width 81.2 ins; front tread 61.8 ins; rear tread 62.4 ins. Weight 4,590 lbs. Gas tank capacity 23 gals. Turning circle diameter 48.1 ft. Tire size 9.50 x 14.

PRICE (without options): $4,763.50

PERFORMANCE: 0 - 30 mph, 3.2 secs; 0 - 50 mph, 7.2 secs; 0 - 60 mph, 9.4 secs; 0 - 70 mph, 13 secs; 40 - 60 mph, 4.9 secs. Top speed 120 mph. All times recorded on corrected speedometer.

IN the modern industrial world of high-pressure claims and counter-claims it's sometimes impossible to separate the good guys from the bad guys. However, in my bald-headed opinion, the outstanding car built in America, bar none, is the 1958 Imperial.

What makes the Imperial so outstanding? Well, let's toss all the parts on the table and take a look. Basically the '58 is very much like the '57, only with a wheelbarrow of improvements, all of them good. In the old days ( and in Europe today ) when a model was introduced, that was the model the comapny stuck with for anywhere from five to ten years - and in some cases longer. It is an engineering impossibility, under the pressure of today's mass set-up, to bring out totally new models every year and have them bug-free.

In Europe, the finer cars are under-going constant refinements to their basic designs. If you think all of Europe's first models are any more bug-free than ours, you're completely mistaken. Such top brands as Mercedes, Bentley and Rolls and similar classics experienced growing pains whenever new models were introduced. In this country, just about the time we have figured out why the trunk leaks, why the body squeaks, why the air-conditioning doesn't air-condition and a hundred other things, we scrap the whole design and start out all over again.

The Imperial was our choice as Top Car of 1957, even though it had its normal crop of bugs, being a radically changed design from '56. Some people feel Chrysler should have made another complete model switch-over for for '58, I, for one, am glad they didn't. It would have been like a guy holding a Royal Flush and calling for a new deal. In sticking with the same basic design in 1958, the annoyances have been eliminated and the car is outstanding, with one exception. That is the asinine location of the Reverse button. It's right between Drive and "2," making it virtually impossible for anyone but Cyclops to reduce gears from Drive without taking his eyes off the road. Why didn't they put it at either end of the vertical row of buttons?

My test car was delivered to me in Florida by Brewster Shaw, the driving dealer who won the MI Acceleration Trophy again (for the fourth time) this year. It was a two-door Southampton model with all red leather upholstery. This costs only a few bucks more and looks to me like a thousand dollars more as I've never been a fan of combination fabric-and-imitation leathers. This is the real McCoy and the only upholstery to have in a car, for my dough

The air-conditioning system was one of the things that held the most interest for me. In 1957 all manufacturers were under-conditioned (for the increased glass areas) and the Imperial was no exception. Our new test job had Chrysler's latest dual air-conditioning, which means you not only get it from the now conventional front unit but also from an additional booster unit located in an unusable part of the trunk. Thus you have air-conditioning in front and behind. It's effective enough to blue the lips of an Eskimo blubber collector parked inside a blast furnace.

To test this car we took it deep into the Florida Everglades and the temperature on a deserted air strip we found was well over 110 degrees. Parked in the broiling sun on the airstrip (which is the acid test for any air-conditioner, since it has no forward rush of air to help the evaporators) I was able to get the inside cab temperature below 60 degrees and by playing with the thermostat it was easy to hold it at a more comfortable range, between 68 - 70 degrees. This is real air-conditioning and will prove a Godsend to anyone who must travel in 100 degree plus weather such as I do during mid-summer.

From the airstrip we ploughed through muddy Everglades roads. This car was equipped with a limited-slip differential which, when tied up with its tremendous 9.5X14 tires, gives it all the traction of a Jeep. I had used a '57 Imperial test car for covering field trials over gook as slimey as a riverboat con-man and I reported about the terrific traction last year. With this limited-slip differential its traction is even better in '58. At one spot we spied an eight-foot alligator and stopped for a look-see. When we decided to take off again, the tires had sunk an inch or two into the muck. As I stepped on the gas gently there was just the slightest trace of wheelspin, so I got off it instantly. The temperature in here was high and as we were miles off the beaten path, our plight could have been pretty nasty. We were surrounded by swamp on each side, loaded with cottonmouth, moccasins and, as we knew, alligators.

Stepping out of the car for a better appraisal of of the situation wasn't too comforting. I slipped the Imp into Low range and applied the gas as soft as a 30-second egg. When this didn't start me moving I threw caution to the winds, like the kid with the Seventh Veil, and clomped it. There were a couple of Voom! Vooms! and out we shot like a pebble from a slingshot. I feel sure that without the limited-slip feature we'd probably still be there, as no guy in his right mind ever came down that path.

On the road (the hard kind, that is) it immediately became evident why this '58 Imperial is America's outstanding car. To start with, it's a big car in every way but behind the wheel you feel it's small. that's because the steering is so light, accurate and positive. And the suspension, the best in the country, lets you maneuver as if it were 2,000 pounds lighter and several feet shorter. There is no car made in America (with the exception of the Chrysler 300) that can match it around a hard bend.

At high speeds (meaning well above 100 mph) it's as unwavering as the white line down the center of the road. We tried a number of emergency cuts, such as you might experience when some village dunce pulls out in front of you, and there was no breakaway. I've driven many sports cars that didn't handle half as well. We made a series of pictures of the car at an airport, taking a hard corner at better than 70 mph, but you won't see the pictures because this car corners so flat that there's absolutely nothing to show. Using an automatic Nikon camera that takes three pictures a second, the printed results of 36 photos of hard cornering look like a group of parked still shots.

We've talked about the great Chrysler full-time power steering before and it's still the best. But in this day when there are several types of suspension systems available, including the newer air suspensions, one must be the best when such radical differences in design are involved. At this writing, I have two test cars with air suspension at my front door, plus the test Imperial. The air suspensions give excellent rides, especially over rough stuff, but when the chips are really down, there is no comparison - Chrysler's Torsion-Aire suspension is miles ahead in every respect, particularly in safety and control. Unlike air suspension (which is a plumber's nightmare at best and is only slightly less complicated than the human brain), there is nothing to service.

One new feature which is extra equipment and was on my test car is Chrysler's 1958 Auto Pilot. In many ways this resembles the automatic governor on the old Silver Ghost Roll-Royce back in the days around World War I. I owned a number of Rolls and took advantage of this feature in hundreds of miles of cross-country travel. With the old Rolls, which had a now-forgotten gas throttle on the steering column, once in high gear, you could set the notched hand throttle for, let's say, 50 mph and from that point on you'd go 50 mph - uphill, downhill and around corners. It had one drawback that Chrysler's new gizmo doesn't - you kept on going at this speed even though the Twentieth Century Limited might cross your path, until you slapped the throttle down. As all but the last model Silver Ghost had two-wheel brakes, stepping on the brakes had about as much effect as slowing down the Queen Mary by dragging your foot.

Chrysler, with their new Auto Pilot, has cut this job of stopping in half. The instant you touch the brake pedal, the whole thing's called off. For example, suppose you get the Imperial going and you want to cruise a turnpike at 60 mph. You set the marker on the instrument panel to "6," then build up your speed as usual. When you reach 60 mph you'll feel a decided backing pressure against your foot which means you've arrived at the desired plateau. Then you push a small button in the center of the control, remove your foot from from the accelerator and you'll keep doing a steady 60 mph until you do one of several things: The first is cancelling-out by touching the brakes.

If you wish to lower or raise speed without calling off the Auto Pilot you can turn the speed dial down to 30 mph and the car will come down to that speed and hold a steady 30 mph. Or you can shove it all the way up to "9" (which is 90 mph) and you'll be doing 90 mph. While you're doing it you can have your feet parked in the glove compartment, if that's the way you like to drive. Below 30 mph and above 90 mph, however, you'll have to resort to the old-fashioned methods and do it the hard way by pushing your foot down on the gas pedal. For an extra burst of speed, floor the accelerator and when you remove your foot the car will return to the pre-set speed automatically.

Now this sort of device usually comes under the head of "gadget" - which it is - but it's a pretty useful gadget for guys like me. I travel tousands of miles every year on turnpikes and the open road where this gizmo would take a lot of the fatigue out of long trips. For example, with this Auto Pilot it would be conceivable to drive all the way from New York to Chicago and only have to touch the the accelerator four or five times, after stopping for tolls. Aside from the fatigue-lessening feature, it is probable that many drivers will get as much as two more miles per gallon using this on long runs, as the speed will be constant and power will only be increased as needed. After having observed thousands of drivers I realize that a large percentage of them drive as if they had pebbles in their shoes or a mild case of St. Vitus' Dance. Only the really good drivers maintain a steady pace mile after mile and even this gets tough to do for the best of them after a few hours. I think this is a great feature and after the hundreds of miles I've used it in open-country running, I feel it should prove very popular, especially with the arrest-prone boys who unconsciously have a way of slipping above spee limits with expensive consequences.

In summing up, here are a few of the features which make this car so outstanding: First, few will deny its looks (I personally think they're the best). But the car is no boulevard dandy; it is just as much at home on any road in America as any car built. For '58 it has anew turn indicator switch which is great (last year's was a horror) and in each front door there are deep door pockets.* The mammoth trunk (mcMichael reports it is the biggest he's tested) is lined with deep carpeting to keep your luggage from being chewed up. The brakes are tops and evn the damnable side mirror can now be adjusted from the inside.* The car will top 120 mph: do 0 - 60 in under 10 seconds and is as quiet as Gimbel's basement on Chritmas morn. In four words - It's America's Finest Car.

* not on base model
[Footnote from Hugh Hemphill, not Tom McCahill

Site Navigation & Links

•Site Entry•
•Dimensions, Statistics, Facts and Figures•
•The Imperial: A Brief History•
•My story, Part 1. From my first to my current owner•
•My story, Part 2. From 1994 to 1998•
•My story, Part 3. From 1998 to the present•
•Cracked head woes in 2001•
•Photo album•
•Tom McCahill's 'Mechanix Illustrated' 1958 Imperial Review;
•Other 1958 Imperials•
•Other 1958 Cars•
•1958 Imperial Advertising images•
•News & Trivia from 1958•
•Mecnaical Info: Parts, Suppliers•
•Imperial Links - Web Sites, Books, Videos, Etc•
•Family & Friends•
•Contacting Mrs. Blueberry•