Remember this Yacht ???

[norgeway]

Chrysler Power Steering!

Its one of those things you either love or hate, I LOVE it,no you do not have ANY "feel of the road"..I dont want to feel the road,I just want that constant control full time power steering gives, you do have to drive differently though, you NEVER rest your hand on top of the wheel,if you do you will constantly be correcting yourself, when you do get used to it all it takes for perfect control is 1 finger, I drove my 62 Plymouth Fury to St Louis to the VCCC convention in 96,...12 Hours on the road,and I was not tired, It takes so little effort to drive, the miles just melt away, and for in town driving...nothing else is even close, parallel parking is totally effortless, one finger is all it takes, even standing still, and the brakes...use only the tip of your shoe, if you step on the pedal as you do in a Ford or GM car...you will be up in the windshield, once you get used to it...everything else drives like a T model Ford!!!

 

[norgeway]

Pushbutton!

You would think that it would take a lot of getting used to to drive a car with pushbutton, but to me it is much better,first,you dont have to worry about catching your sleeve on the lever, or about kids grabbing the lever,and about 1 week is all it took me to be shifting by feel, You just naturally know where reverse drive second or first is,just as you do in a car with a shift lever, most men just know by feel what gear you are in,..my mother as most women, never develop this "FEEL" they will always look at the indicator, whereas I never look,it is the same with pushbutton, the first button is reverse, the next is neutral, then drive-second -and first...park is simple, just pull the little chrome lever down.

 

[lordkenmore]

I just found an article on the Chrysler Torqueflite transmission. It includes a discussion of the push button issue, and from what I read, it sounds like there are many theories of why Chrysler dropped pushbuttons. Everything from trying to attract GM/Ford buyers to saving a bit of money in manufacturing.

Link to article (push button talk "About the Pushbutton Automatics" is more than 1/2 way down page. But I found whole page interesting.):

http://www.allpar.com/mopar/torqueflite.html

 

[hydralique]

'59s . . .

I saw three '59 cars yesterday just by happenstance. One was a sad and forlorn looking '59 Impala four-door hardtop parked with some other old cars, one a rather nice '59 Impala two-door hardtop (with a continental kit even!) westbound on the Ventura freeway, and then later on the Ventura an eastbound Ford Galaxie retractible with the top up. Nice to see 'em on the road.

The pic below is a Facel-Vega Excellance which might be a '59 as this model entered production in '58, though I didn't take the pic so can't be sure. Since there is no shift lever on the console this is a Torqueflite car with buttons in a quadrant to the left of the instruments much like those used by Plymouth in '57-'58. The console was necessary as some Excellences were equipped with the Pont-a-Mousson manual four speed. That gearbox was offered by Chrysler on the '60 300 for those who preferred to shift for themselves though reportedly only a handful were built. About 150 Excellences were built so those aren't common either. Unfortunately, when the people at Facel lengthened their two-door coupes to create the Excellence they forgot to add enough beef to ensure rigidity, and sometimes those pretty doors didn't like to open easily.

 

[retropia]

We had a '62 Newport sedan growing up. If I remember correctly, it was before the "park" lever was added below the push-buttons, so you absolutely had to make sure to use the parking brake every time.

There was a trend towards standardizing controls in cars. It was easier for Chrysler to adopt standards used by bigger Ford and GM than it was to try to educate consumers. For example, people renting cars, which was a growing industry in the 1960s, wanted cars to operate the same way.

 

[norgeway]

Exactly right!

Dodge and Plymouth had a park lever in 62, but Chrysler did not have park until 63,the emergency brake was a brake drum behind the Torqueflite, so when you set it...it didnt move, also do you remember the 60-62 Chryslers had the signal light lever under the pushbuttons on the dash?? In 65 GM also standardized there shift , if you will remember thru 64 , reverse was the last position, where low is now.

 

[retropia]

Yes, Hans, I remember the turn signal indicator on the '62 Newport was a left-right pivoting lever switch under the transmission push-buttons. Perfect symmetry was in vogue back then, and the left-side transmission push-buttons matched the right-side climate-control push-buttons. The pivoting lever switch on the left was matched by the temperature-control lever on the right.

Our turn signal indicator switch wouldn't stay in place after a few years. You had to hold it to the left or to the right to keep the turn signal going until you completed your turn. That meant steering the massive Chrysler with one hand, but fortunately, the power steering was so easy you could steer it with a single pinky finger if you wanted to.

Here is a pretty good photo of what it looked like.

 

[toploader55]

OK

What was the Model and Year Dodge that had a almost Transparent ( but seemed like it) Speedometer that was raised above the dash Line, Had pushbottons and all the levers I'm thinking 1960-1962 ?????

Dan, Dan , qsd_dan ??/

You're quite the MoPar guy. Whoops... TagMan LOL.

 

[norgeway]

Dodge!

Used this in 60 and 61 as did DeSoto.

 

[electron1100]

50s cadillac

A friend of mine recently bought this beauty and intends to restore it, he brought it into work so i could see it.

To me these sort of vehicles are the ultimate, nothing to do with efficiency, but all to do with life, comfort, pleasure and happiness

It rather amused me to have a vehicle that does about 8 miles to the gallon on the re-cylcing sight where i work as it would make the most of the hippies that frequent the place have a fit ;-)

 

[electron1100]

V8

Beautiful Motor and it just purrs

 

[electron1100]

Curvy Arse

style and more style or should that be sex ;-)

 

[appnut]

Gary WOW!! Imagine that's the only one in the British Isles. That is one very fortunate friend you have there. Will be a labour of love.

 

[norgeway]

If he isn't!!

Getting but 8 mpg...he needs a tune up, 16 to 18 would be about right, nearly twenty on a normal sedan!

 

[hydralique]

That could be the only '51 Cadillac Fleetwood limo in Britain, but there's an active club scene for older American cars there so there are other old Caddies around. I love this photo, reportedly taken in '54, of film star Diana Dors standing next to a convertible at the gates to Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire. The car is a '55, so the photo must have been taken in the fall of '54. Presumably Miss Dors is comparing her dagmars with those on the Caddy! Somewhere there is a video of her driving the car down a typically tiny English lane out in the country - I hope nobody was coming the other way!

 

[rp2813]

Great Caddy!

Gary, that car has the two key attributes nailed: straight and original. When I was younger, a large family we knew had that same black limo, but perhaps a later 50's version. I think station wagons were too suburban for their tastes.

Our '64 Continental convertible ended up in the U.K a few years ago. It has probably been restored by now and, I hope, is back on the streets. It was a fun car to drive, but a cosmetic trainwreck. The car pictured is identical in every respect except for the blackwall tires and, although difficult to see, the ribbed metal trim around the tail light lenses, which only appeared on the '65 model year.

Ralph

 

[MikeS]

That '62 Chrysler Dash

Brings back nice memories. Our '62 Newport Sedan had a blue dash and the air conditioner vents on top of the dash, but otherwise was the same. Loved that instrument pod; it was so "Jetsons" and very easy to read at night.
From what I read, the federal government was responsible for the demise of Chrysler's push button transmission; the feds wanted the automatic quadrants standardized to prevent accidents (such as the ones caused by the original HydraMatic's placement of Reverse to the far right instead of between Park and Reverse). And there were some car buyers who refused to buy a Chrysler product because of the push buttons. But I loved the buttons and the low-effort power steering (especially on my mom's '72 Plymouth Satellite Sebring hardtop; that sucker handled like a dream)!

 

[appliguy]

The government had NOTHING to do with the elimination of pus

Actually according to research one of our own memebers, Chad Schieberl (Programcomputer), did at Chrysler the 2 reasona Chrysler went back to a column gear shift was....First off Chrysler was loosing the drivers education market to everyone else who by that time had conventional gear shifts.... both the public school systems and private driving schools were turning away from Plymouth and Dodge and going with other makes. The second reason was a lot more simple.... Lynn Townsend, who was president of Chrysler at the time hated them and wanted them gone and so they were replaced by the conventional lever in 1965. FYI the very first year and a half Power Flite was offered (mid 1953 through 1954) it sported a conventional gear shift lever.....PAT COFFEY

 

[appliguy]

I especially shudder at the thought of hitting "R"

LordKenmore.....Chrysler made both their pushbutton automatics with a feature that shifted the car into neutral if the car was going faster than 3 mph and the R button was accidentally pressed. PAT COFFEY