Another day and another Facebook Marketplace gem. Although I rank Chrysler's 1969-1973 "fuselage" designs far below even Ford's of this era, this 1972 Chrysler New Yorker is worth a minute or two of our time. After all she's a hardtop (!) in great condition, it's for sale in Detroit - one of my favoirte cities on earth and the owner is asking just $5,000 for it. Is that bargain basement asking price enough for me to see past its slab-sided awfulness and that it's a four-door? Of course not...but let's kick the tires anyway 'cause that's what we do here.
Chrysler referred to their 1969-1973 full-size cars as "fuselage" because the body was meant to emulate that of an aircraft; as if John Doe "buying public" knew what that meant or gave a hoot. The chrome trim on the bottom of our '72 here and the vinyl top mask the subtle cylindrical shape of the car but it's there if you look hard enough. I only see it when it's pointed out to me and I still think it, meh.
This is a great shot posted by the seller and shows off just how big these things are in front of the dashboard. In addition to their ungodly length, they're also impossibly wide; I learned to drive in frieghters like this and I was terrified by them. If you've ever driven a car this big you know they're a handful. The tips of the front and rear passenger side fenders are so far away from the driver they might as well be across the river in Canada.
The engine in our '72 here ginormous as well. And ineffecient. This is Chrysler's famed although smogged up 440 cubic-inch V-8. Combine this beast with the car's barn-door aerodynamics, two-ton plus curb weight and a final drive ratio perhaps as low as 3.23:1, more like 2.94:1, and you got an old fashioned gas guzzler here. Hauling this back to Cleveland from Detroit might run me more than hundred bucks seeing that it might get nine, ten miles per gallon highway. That would be with the air-conditioning off.
But who needs air conditioning when you have a hardtop? Drop all four windows and you have mother nature's evervesnance cascading through the cabin. Well, more like ripping through it. Better have everything including the baby strapped down since with the windows open, note the rear door windows go all-the-way-down, the gael force winds swirling through the car will blast anything not velcroed right onto the interstate.
Oh, domestic dashboards of the '70's. Just like GM and Ford, Chrylser really cheaped out on interior detials with these cars. The switchgear is garbage; hollow, life-less knobs that feel like they're going to pop off in your hand as you use them. You'd find more engaging button "snick-snack" on light switches from Home Depot. Any wonder why luxury car buyers were so enthralled by the imports back then?
Chrysler's reboot for 1974 resulted in some of my favorite designs of the era although they were derivatively styled; Chrysler making better looking Cadillac's Ford or GM for that matter did. Poor, scandel ridden Chrysler's timing was horrendous. Longer, wider, heavier and even thirstier cars launched to replace this leviathan just as the first gas-crisis hit. This thing is bad enough on gas - the cars that replaced these were even worse.
Gotta hand it to Chrysler, though. As polarizing as these designs were, while Ford chased after GM designs with varying degrees of failure, Chrysler's of this vintage looked like nothing else available at the time. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Cheapo asking price and all. I know if I sprung the five-grand or so for it I'd be kicking myself that that money would have been better spent on a Cadillac of the same vintage. Coupe deVille of course.
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