Monday, March 20, 2023

1964 Chrysler New Yorker - Double Standards


These 1964 and similar looking '63 Chrysler New Yorkers certainly have their fans, I'm on the fence about them. 

That said, with this being a Chrysler, I think nothing of looking past its quirks and foibles. For certain, if this was an American Motors design, I'd think it freakish and weird. My inner voice screaming, "why can't you be normal?". It being a Chrysler I'm like, "yeah, that's cool. Not my cup of tea but ok."


Double standards are funny like that. Not unlike that charming, oh-so-handsome guy who thinks he can say whatever he wants to women in the office and get away with it. The older, pudgy, balding bespectacled clod says things not half as offensive and he ends up in HR. 


Chrysler's New Yorker was all-new for 1960 New Yorker had huge brake shoes to fill after Chrysler's 1957-1959 models changed the game wholesale. Legend has it when GM executives got wind of Chrysler's 1957 line, they scrapped their plans for their '59's coming instead with some of the most outlandish designs of all time. The Chrysler class of 1957 on top of a literal bumper crop of lovely designs they introduced for 1955. Therefore, safe to say that Chrysler was on quite the roll back then but in a day and age of "planned obsolescence", to keep everything new and make last year's model seem old and outdated, something was bound to go wrong. Or less than right. 


From 1955 through 1964, though, Chrysler had a series of designs that were, for the most part, confident, balanced, cohesive and seemingly penned by one person or team with a singular vision; that makes sense because they generally were designed by famed auto designer Virgil Exner.  


Doesn't mean they all "worked", though. Naturally, I think this works somewhat better as a coupe but all 1963 and 1964 "New Yorkers" of the vintage were 4-door sedans; you wanted something with just 2-doors you had to get a "300 J" or "K".

There's a wonton flamboyance to this car that's not unlike the fashion conscious who are able to pull off wearing just about anything and make whatever it is they're wearing seem more special because they're wearing it. Others wear the same thing and something's just not right, or "off". 


It's like someone my age trying to wear "skinny jeans". I mean, candidly, I don't embarrass myself in them but the look certainly draws attention in ways that I didn't intend. It's like my wife wearing a bikini, she most certainly can but she doesn't. 


This Facebook Marketplace find is for sale in Angola, Indiana over in north central Indiana right on the Indiana-Michigan border. The asking price is $5,600 and that seems like a bargain considering it has a rebuilt 440-cubic inch V-8 with lots of go-fast stuff on it. I'd talk the poster of the ad down just to get the motor; wish I had a Cordoba to drop it into. 


No doubt a hardcore, old school Chrysler fan would cry afoul at that notion. Don't be calling H.R. on me. 


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