How bizarre, Ralph.
The worst A/C on any of my cars (well, only two of my cars have had A/C) is on my '97 Dodge Neon. It works fine when it works, but over the past five years it's been leaking refrigerant. I fill it up, and it works ok for a while again, and then loses its charge again. Probably lost it again by now, since I've had it parked for about a year now (engine rear main seal needs replacing).
The A/C on my '99 Chrysler however works just fine, even though it was parked mostly for about 10 years, with less than 40,000 miles on it. Now I drive it on a daily basis and appreciate the A/C. I guess this is part of the difference between an econo box and a top of the line model. The Neon was obviously built to a price point - and the lack of longevity of some components points to that. The 300M, built of somewhat higher quality components and although it doesn't get as good mileage as the Neon, they are more trouble free and comfortable miles.
As an aside, Chrysler Corporation was an early adopter of A/C, having created a revolutionary high speed radial compressor to help cool the Chrysler building in Manhattan in the early 1930's. Out of that came the Airtemp Corporation, which went on to cool Pullman railroad cars before A/C was applied to passenger cars.
More info:
"Not surprisingly, Airtemp took a position of leadership in air conditioning, inventing capacity regulators (to allow compressors to work at the required load, rather than at peak) in 1937, and the first self-contained units (featuring the first sealed radial compressor) in 1938, the year Airtemp was re-absorbed back into Chrysler Corporation as a division. By 1941, Airtemp had over 500 dealers - each backed by an installation engineer - and by 1948, it employed 1,325 people in Dayton. Ironically, though, Chrysler was not the first brand to have onboard air conditioning; that honor goes to Packard, in 1940, and then to Cadillac, in 1941. Chrysler offered air conditioning in 1942, and three 1942 DeSotos with the system are known to exist, according to Collectible Automobile (February 2007 issue).
...1953 was apparently the first year for air conditioning in Chrysler vehicles, although they almost had it eleven years earlier. The earliest Chrysler trunk mounted systems used R22. My theory is that since Chrysler's Airtemp Division made home and commercial units already, this is what they were familiar with and this is what they used.
A/C units from 1957 on appear to have used R12, and were sourced from an outside supplier (Eaton, Yale, & Towne in most older models) despite use of the Airtemp name. Some 1957 MoPar owners' manuals refer to the factory A/C units as "Cartemp Air Conditioning", an apparent attempt to establish a secondary brand name for the outside-vendor-supplied car units.
On the outside, air-conditioned Mopar products used flush-mounted air intake grilles instead of clumsy-looking scoops like the competition. ... Its unit took up little trunk space, and the compressor took up only one cubic foot under the hood. The condenser panel was mounted out of the way, diagonally, in front of the radiator, where it received adequate fresh air without blocking the cooling system. ...
A single switch-marked Low, Medium, and High selected fan speed. High was capable of cooling a big DeSoto or Chrysler from 120 to 85 degrees in about two minutes, and also completely eliminated humidity, dust, pollen, and tobacco smoke. Since Airtemp relied on fresh air, drawing in 60 percent more than any other system, it avoided the staleness associated with more primitive rigs. It was also silent and unobtrusive. Instead of the awkward plastic tubes mounted on the package shelf, as on GM and other setups, Airtemp employed small ducts that directed cool air toward the ceiling of the car, the air then filtering down around the passengers instead of blowing directly at them."
