Something for you, Hans ~ 1957 Chrysler dealer promo

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OHH yes, I have seen both the 57 and 58 versions!

I agree whole heartedly, Except, the 57s were rushed into production and had many quality control issues, the 58s were much better, but the reason the Chryslers performed so well was two fold, the biggest reason was the Torqueflite transmission, Up against a Dynaflow or Hydramatic there was no contest, the other thing was the engine, in the desotos dodges and Chryslers there was a Hemi under the hood, no contest!
 
Dynaslush...

My biggest laugh with the film was when the Buick Super just dropped back as soon as the Torqueflite and Hydramatic that actually have gears accelerated instead of relying on a torque converter alone.

I do think that the high speed cornering test was biased though, just look as to the path the GM cars take vs the Chrysler cars, they clearly choose to drive closer to the gravel.
 
the 354 poly (semi-hemi)...

found on the Windsor, many Dodges, etc was also an excellent engine, sharing the block but not heads with the hemis, but of course what really made the difference was the front torsion bar, rear leaf suspension vs the typical mushy GM coils.
 
still miss

<<---- our '58 Chrysler, now in Sweden, sold after we got it back in shape.
It had the 354 and top-option TorqueFlite, but some Mopars did have the 2 spd PowerFlite in many models and did for a number of years to come. Our '58 DeSoto had the 350 wedge engine and 2 spd PowerFlite.
 
You really have to

Drive a old Chrysler product to understand how much better it handles and drives, the steering is my favorite thing, many people don't like it because its totally effortless, but I LOVE it, you can hit a pothole or run off the shoulder of the road with 1 finger on the wheel and still have control.
 
Just some observations and memories------

Depended on what kind of ride one expected. If you wanted a "couch on wheels" it was hard to beat a Ninety-Eight, Roadmaster 75, or a Fleetwood Sixty-Special or especially a Fleetwood 75. Considering how much they weighed, their engines got them moving pretty well. They weren't built to race.
Well, the commercial chassis was. Just ask anyone who remembers when you called a funeral home to get an ambulance.

The Chrysler products were lighter and they had a rather stiff suspension. Also, by the late fifties Packard, with their Torsion Bar system was long gone. Ford was busy making the Lincolns as large as they could and still have just four wheels.
All the early Power Steering systems had little "feel". I have driven them all and can't say they were very different. When Cadillac introduced their Variable Ratio system in '66 that made a big difference. Especially with the commercial cars. The big thing I recall about the Chrysler system was that there were less turns "lock to lock" and it could make parking a chore and a U-Turn dangerous.
We had a black '66 New Yorker we used as a lead-car and you needed a football field to make a circle.

It took a while for Chrysler to offer the Torqueflight tranny, and it was worth the wait. Even when the 440 came along, you could punch it and barely feel it shift. I also loved the push-button system. As usual, the Government got involved and by 1965 the push buttons were gone. Ridiculous. It was great not having that shift lever in the way. I loved the Dyna-Flow for the smoothness of operation, and you weren't going to win a race. Still, once you got it past about 50 mph it would really go. The Twin-Turbine system in the early sixties Riviera's was fast! I think the Hydramatic really evolved in the early 60's. When Cadillac introduced a 429 V8 in 1964 that engine/ drivetrain combination was powerful! It felt like endless torque. I think there were actually some Cadillacs built with Dyna-Flows in them one year. Don't remember exactly what year. There were Hydramatics in Fords for a while,too. I was at Capital in downtown Atlanta one day in the late sixties waiting for a car to be serviced. In a fenced off part of their lot were four identical Fleetwood Sixty Specials tagged for "export". I think I was pretty shocked to observe that that were NOT Hydramatics. They all had "three on the tree"! I was told they were headed to South America.

Years ago in Florida I had a turquoise metallic late sixties Imperial. It was a great car. The Air-Temp A/C could freeze you out!
 
I believe that in 1964 GM switched from the Hydramatic to the Turbo-Hydramatic (400) which had more in relation to the design of the competing Torqueflite than with the Hydramatic that proceeded it.
 
Re funeral home ambulances

In my hometown of Leonor nc we had three funeral homes millers had cadillacs pendrys had mercurys and greets had pontiacs in 1965 a friend of ours had a baby who was very premature her husband held the baby on his lap in a portable incubator all the way to baptist hospital in Winston Salem he told me he had never been as scared in his life they were in greets new 421 Pontiac and they made a hour and forty minute trip in 45 minutes he said on all the straight stretches they did well over a hundred. Greers not greets. Lol
 
Cadillacs with Dynaflow

I had read about this before too Steve. Here is the clip from Wikipedia about this:

The early 1950s Cadillacs were normally equipped with Hydramatic transmissions. In 1953 the General Motors Hydramatic Plant burned to the ground, leaving Cadillac without a source of transmissions. Buick Dynaflow transmissions were hastily adapted to Cadillac mount points, and some 19,000 1953 Model 62 Cadillacs, and some 28,000 Cadillacs of all models, were equipped with Dynaflow transmissions. Several thousand 1953 Oldsmobiles were also equipped with Dynaflow.

I owned a 67 Buick Skylark 2 dr HT from the spring of 76 til the fall of 81. The car was without doubt the most favorite car I ever owned. The Twin Turbine Dynaflow was a smooth as silk and I consistantly got 19 mpg. I know this because the float for the gas gauge stuck for about a year, so I had to keep track of my milage so I wouldn't run out of gas, which never happened. Then one day when I went over some RR tracks fast the gauge suddenly began to registar again, the float must have been rusted and the sharp movement shook it loose.

I also owned a 55 Cadillac Coupe DeVille for about 8 months in 74. That big old boat just floated, but big as it was I used to parallel park it in downtown San Francisco, and it took the curves of the north coast Hwy 1 like a much smaller car, handled with ease, the power brakes were very good, little fade and they didn't grab like a lot of the power brakes on 50's and 60's cars. But the gas milage, terrible! I could actually watch the gas gauge go down on the Waldo Grade. It got about 8 mpg and used a quart of oil with every fill up. But for a 19 year old car at the time, with 100,000 plus miles it really flew. And if you've never driven a car with vacuum wipers before, its a different experience. They will slow to almost a stop on acceleration. The Hydramatic shifted smoothly and predictably. I got rid of it because it was a money pit and there was gas rationing, but I sure enjoyed that Cadillac while I had it. You could squeeze four in the front and another four in the back, so it was popular with friends.
Eddie
 
Hydra-Matic vs Turbo Hydra-Matic 400

I've read in more than one place that royalties were paid to the same gentleman by both GM and Chrysler for that 3-speed design, but not sure. There's no doubt that the original four speed Hydra-Matic was more economical if not as smooth, but when GM brought out the Turbo in '64 the difference in acceleration was quite noticeable. Read the Motor Trend test of the '64 deVille compared to that of the '63. Of course, in '64 the Series 62 still had the old 4-speed as did the Series 75.

If other car guys on here like these YouTube clips be sure and check out the ones that Bob Rodger did on a few years of the Chrysler 300. He was an amazing engineer and I'm glad he's immortalized on film with the cars he mentored.
 
Of course

The 63still had the 390 engine, the 64 not only had the new Turbo Hydra Matic, it also had the new 429 engine, I had a 66 and let me tell you, for a big heavy car, it would really move!
 
'63 to '68

The '63 Cadillac had the first all new engine since their first OHV was introduced in 1949. The 429 was simply bored out from the 390. The next all new engine came with the 472 in 1968. It was not only much more powerful, but GM had designed it to accommodate the coming emission challenges. If you remember, the '68 Lincoln started the year with the 462, being enlarged from the '58 430 in 1966, and then finished the year with the new 460. It was introduced for the same reason--emissions.

I still think the 1966 Cadillac was the best looking of the 1960's models, and the dashboard was stunning. Still floors me the number of sane people who would buy a car at that price, though, and not buy the climate control! I dated a girl in the 70's in college who had a '66 Calais coupe and while it wasn't all that fast, it was a true land yacht. I had a '65 Olds 98 convertible at that time and there was no comparison in quality, even though they did share a body.
 
Was the first Chrysler Torque Flight

the A727? But for a lock up convertor clutch, it never changed through the 80's.
Maybe an overdrive?
GM lost the only then Hydramatic plant in Livonia to a fire in 1956. That set them back.
They did have a 3 speed automatic for Pontiac, Olds, and Buick before the Simpson planetary based Turbo 350 and 400's. Not sure if that was the roto-hydramatic, or slim Jim. At least one had a second rear pump and could be push started. That may have been the later Dynalfow made in Flint, not certain.
Chevrolet only used the 2 speed Powerglide until their Mk1V big block 327, and 396 V8's debuted. Pontiac, Olds, and Buick, and Cadillac were the first to offer the turbo hydramatics in 1965.
The 400 has a center trunyon support the 350 doesn't, plus electric passing gear kick down vs. detent cable on the 350.
 
The Hydra Matic plant, burned in 53

The Slim Jim AKA Roto Hydramatic was a dreadful thing, Odd shifts and very prone to break, especially if raced, and who wouldn't want to step down on a Olds with a 394 or a Pontiac with a 389! I had 2 of them, a 61 and a 63 Olds, the cars would have been wonderful if not for that transmission.I had a 65 Olds with the Turbo 400, and it really WOULD fly! The first THM had a switch the pitch toeque converter much like a Dynaflow, if you power braked that thing, you could here the rpm go up when the blades changed pitch, then it would lay rubber! That big old 98 embarrassed several kids in Camaros and such!
 
Livonia

'vacerator' - actually, the Livonia fire was 8/12/1953. It remains the worst dollar-loss disaster in our auto industry.

If you remember, they had to put Dynaflows into Cadillacs until they could get going with Hydra-Matics again. I've never ridden in one of those but boy, I'd sure have waited to get my Cadillac with the Hydra-Matic!

My first car in high school in the early 70's was a 1951 Lincoln Sport Sedan - the one with the Lincoln front and cowl and the Mercury body from the A-pillar back. Mine had the original Hydra-Matic in it and I loved driving it. Mated to that 900 pound flathead V-8 that was borrowed from Ford's medium-duty truck line, it was smooth, positive shifting. The only thing I didn't like about it was the lack of a parking pawl. I can understand why people in that time enjoyed that transmission, since it wasn't slushy like the Dynaflow or the original Powerglide.

Did you ever drive a Chrysler Fluid Drive much? When I was a kid in the 60's my father had a Dodge 'work car' that had one. I just thought that thing was so cool, and boy, was it smooth! Of course, you couldn't be in a hurry between that, and that old Dodge flat head six. But people weren't as obsessed with looking cool back then. . .
 
Without going too far off topic...

TorqueFlite was the first automatic with a Simpson Gearset, which Chrysler had to licence...Ford's 1958 3-speed Cruise-O-Matic and GM's 1964
3 speed Turbo-Hydra Matic also used the Simpson Gearset, which leads many to believe that they copied TF, which is partially true. The 1940-1965 Hydra-Matic used a Fluid Coupling, which does not multiply torque like a torque converter, which is why the were 4 speed units with a low 1st gear ration to compensate. They were not overdrive units, since top gear had a 1:1 ratio. The 'Slim-Jim' Roto-Hydramatics were strange birds indeed...I would run screaming from them! [this post was last edited: 10/12/2017-17:37]
 

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