FULL REVIEW: Syd Mead’s 12k mile, 1972 Imperial Lebaron 4 door hardtop

it's mopar luxury next hi my name's adam welcome to my rare classic car channel today what a number of you have been waiting for mopar luxury for 1972. the 1972 imperial lebaron four-door hardtop imperial was a make that became a standalone make actually in 1955 and continued as a standalone until 1975 and then chrysler revived it again as a standalone make from 81 to 83 very briefly but this is really the last of the i'll say super sized imperials so the 1973 imperial is actually the longest non-limousine production car made by an american automaker at 235 inches long and this 72 the only thing that's different really aside from a few minor things like the engine horsepower went down by 10 from a 72 versus 73 is a 73 has some pretty big bumper guards in the front in the rear that extend the length a little bit but aside from that the exterior of the 72 and three are quite similar and this car is consequently huge it's longer than a modern day suburban and takes a full tank of gas if you want to drive around it but as i was mentioning imperial was its own separate make for chrysler from 55 until 75 but this was really the last of i'll say kind of the unique imperials if you will in 74 chrysler moved from the this vehicle's 127 inch wheelbase to 124 inch wheelbase the car shrunk a bit and it shared a lot more components with the new yorker this and the new yorker have some similar components but they also have a lot of different components and the imperial is quite unique so after 73 this really just 73 was the last year where the imperial remained kind of its unique and a lot of the chassis features as well as the styling before getting consolidated with the new yorker in 74. and before that the imperials before 1967 so up until 1966 were even more unique they had a full frame chassis whereas the rest of the chrysler lineup had migrated to a unibody structure and this car that you're seeing here the 72 is also unibody it preserved that underlying chassis philosophy so has the torsion bar front suspension leaf spring rear unibody construction although there really are some quite rigid i'll call them semi-frame cross members for the engine cradle and up front as well as the suspension mounting out back so it's really a beefy car in spite of it being a unibody car and for those who don't know a lot of the vehicles of this era were separate body-on-frame vehicles in other words there was a separate chassis that the engine and the wheels transmission and the rear end more or less mated to and then the body all the sheet metal would essentially drop down onto the chassis and bolt in a number of locations to it with rubber mounting that's how pickups a lot of pickups are still made today not the ford maverick it just came out but the full-size pickups and the mid-size pickups like the f-150s silverados rams those are still body on frame today but the last kind of dinosaur body on frame car was the ford crown victoria mercury marquee lincoln town car since then there hasn't been a body-on-frame car that's been made or sold in in the states so unique chassis design super long i mean it's tough to do unibodies in this length just because of the potential flex that exists in something that has this big of a wheelbase and is this lengthy and this is actually the longest unibody production car that's made at least the 73 version the 58 to 60 lincoln's come close uh the 58 9 60 lincoln about 227 inches long and as i mentioned this car is 230 inches long and the 73 is 235 inches long so this is not only the longest production car made but it's unique in that it's a unibody vehicle and of all the vehicles in my collection i have to say that this one is this one may be my favorite it's so unique it's such a great color combination this black with a gold interior and it also has a quite famous history and ownership so i bought the car from a gentleman who is a relatively famous hollywood individual and super famous in the art community his name's sid mead he recently passed away but sid was a friend of a friend and i got introduced to him by one of my friends and he was selling his imperial looking for a good home for it and i always wanted one of these i just thought that the styling was so futuristic so cool that this was a perfect vehicle to own and sid was looking to place it he was nearing the end of his life uh unfortunately and he passed away i think four months after i bought the car but if you've seen aliens or blade runner or i would say that overall super industrial sci-fi look with all the pipes and the steam and everything that's really his creation so a really famous individual in the art world if you google his artwork just look up sid syd mead m-e-a-d online and you'll find some amazing artwork he started at ford motor company and then did some work for u.s steel and really went on his own and got into hollywood doing set design as i mentioned for movies like blade runner tron aliens and other things but sid was the previous owner of this car and you can almost see why somebody who is a visual futurist is he and others called himself would drive something that looked like this it just has that overly futuristic look even though this car is quite dated by today's standards it looks like nothing on the road and it appears like it came out of a sci-fi movie some at gm have told me that in the 70s bill mitchell the styling vp of gm didn't really care for this front end and thought it looked like the rear end of a car so he put it at the gm tech center driving backwards and uh was poking fun at it but i don't think there's anything to poke fun at i think it's a brilliant design the car overall is quite a simple you know design too it has this really nice curvature to it and i think the most surprising thing about it is many cars from this era in automotive history uh at least u.s cars are big this one feels and looks even bigger and more imposing and part of that is not only the sheer length of it but it actually is two inches taller in overall height than the cadillac of the same year so as you walk up to it like i am right now it feels more visually imposing because it's harder to peer over the roof and these doors come up pretty tall you actually kind of step up into the car as opposed to a gm or four of the era where this roof line was lower and you step down into the car so it just adds to the imposing nature of it overall but it has such subtle and amazing detailing you know this lebaron script here the frenched in rear window which interestingly is just padded here and not anywhere else this is a fiberglass cap that's underneath here to make this rear window and then my favorite is this imperial mid-century modern black lettering and then the side marker light with the imperial logo here much less the super cool back end with the vertical tail lights and this bumper with nice curvature and the nicely integrated reverse light right in the middle there i do like how they presented this it's imperial by chrysler not the chrysler imperial again this was a separate make until 1975. and while simple these wheel covers are just a phenomenal piece of art detailing with kind of the turbine vein look if you will wonderfully integrated cornering lights here you have this is actually the only turn signal on the car the dash does not have any turn signal indicators the only turn signal indicators of the car on the tops of the fenders so these illuminate when you have engaged the turn signal the new yorker also had that but the new yorker had a flashing light on the dash too to indicate the turn signals were operating and of course the hidden headlights which are powered by one central electric motor and those headlight doors are extremely heavy when you turn them off they kind of slam humorously with a lot of weight i remember i did that for the first time and i thought i broke something when i was turning the headlights off it turns out it was just the headlight motor closing the doors by this time period the imperial i believe was the only car that was still road tested from the factory and i think they put something like 30 or 40 miles on the vehicles before they were delivered they were the last car to tout that and in general i would say the quality in this car is not horrible not great you know for mopar standards of the era it's pretty good the door fit and finish is i would say quite good there are some areas particularly on the hood where there's a bit of orange peel in the paint and this is an all original paint car and an original interior as well this car actually only has 12 600 miles on it so it's just getting broken in and complete with the black exterior you have this very very rich and luxurious gold button tufted interior which very much resembles the mies van der rohe barcelona chairs for those of you who have seen those in the doctor's office or somewhere else and the back seat is just an overwhelmingly luxurious place to be aside from the seat in the center fold-on armrest you have a head pillow in the c-pillar that's soft that you can rest your head against and you can see a reading light that's integrated into the back there there's a switch right here it says dome you can just push it and then there's the reading light it's illuminated and you have this chrysler called the lavalier strap that rotates to help you exit other nice feature in these is in the doors there's a little pocket here that you can put things in now you know that's a wonderful feature but this snap is kind of cheap looking and looks out of place kind of like a boat cover i guess maybe that's appropriate to resemble a boat cover on something this long but the overall interior of the car it's extremely spacious comfortable did share a similar dash as the new yorker but the padding here is much thicker i do have a 72 new yorker which i'll feature in another video and you'll see that this padding here is different of course the obviously faux wood grain uh was also unique to the baron the new yorker did not have that in fact on the new yorker this glovebox store is uh metal it's textured and you can see this car has a number of options it's actually not that well equipped for an imperial but it does have the power driver seat not power passenger seat it does have the auto temp control which you can watch my videos on what i've had to do to make that operational am fm radio these little toggles here are for the map light if i close the door you can see i can toggle this the map light goes on and then the antenna you just push the antenna up or down that's with that other toggle right there and there's a few vent pulls interesting chrysler had these manually operated still the kick well vents in this high end of a luxury car but i suppose they thought that you're only using those as a last resort you're going to be using your auto temp most the time and in spite of this air conditioner only having four outlet vents the only upper outlet vents are these two right here that's it there's no outlet vent there on the driver's side there's no additional outlet vent at least at eye level or you know it's called chest level on the passenger side the only other ones are these i call them knee coolers down here at the bottom so it's four outlet vents in total but in spite of just having four outlet vents this car actually cools really well in the summertime and you have you know heater vents that ducked out along the bottom here but uh in the next generation chrysler the one that was introduced in 74 they touted how many outlet vents the car had because i think that there were uh at least six outlet vents in the subsequent car maybe even eight if i'm recalling correctly so it is strange to me that this is all that you have in terms of the upper registers fiat vents but it actually works just fine i rotate one you know toward me i rotate another toward the passenger and the fan is decently powerful too so even on a hot day it cools well i still have this running on r12 so the outlet temperature is very very cold below freezing these old evaporators have pretty big fins so they don't freeze over and clog up whereas the new ones have pretty thin fins and the evaporators can only run at temperatures slightly above freezing so one reason why a lot of people say oh the refrigerant is is different it's not as good well the fan speeds are more powerful now but the outlet temperature is not as cold and part of the reason for that is the evaporator fin distance as i was mentioning is not as great as it is on these cars but this car does have power door locks you can hear them activate there and it has not only power windows but power vent windows so this is a gm power vent window mechanism that chrysler borrowed along with the tilt steering column the tilt telescope wheel here is actually a gm saginaw column so while chrysler was not doing the amc thing of robbing everybody for components they did share some components with others other interesting features this does have as i mentioned am stereo radio if you you want to fade the speaker outlet front or back you rotate this dial to have the sound coming out more or less from the front to the back speakers and as you can see here put the key on this car has a full complement of gauges which was very unique for the time period even the new yorker didn't have this full complement it basically had you know an alternator gauge did not have an oil pressure gauge three speed wiper switch and also let me just turn the key off when you open the door aside from the the buzzer the fastened belt and locked doors light come on and they're on a timer they go off after about 10 seconds so a gentle reminder to fasten the belts and lock the doors before you take off pretty rich carpet here not as rich as on the fords that had almost a shag carpet but nonetheless a nice carpet and the seats just the overall richness of the interior is quite amazing there are some minor details like i would say this wood grain trim well everybody was using full wood grain trim during that era this looks overly fake to me especially on these door handles and the casket handle here but and the a-pillar trim is hard plastic whereas others have this padded but aside from that this car just reads like a rich rich luxury car it does have the rimblow wheel that's popular in those days so i pinched it tilt telescope wheel so this is the telescoping lever you can extend the wheel forward and back in addition to tilting it just an overall neat place let's take a look under hood and at the trunk so turning around back we'll check the trunk and on chrysler's you put the key in upside down from how you would a gm vehicle ford had double cut keys but a chrysler engineer told me and family friend that they did that to better prevent the lock cylinder from freezing in the winter but you have the proverbial six body trunk in here with about 20 cubic feet of storage so no shortage of storage in here just with a basic loop pile carpet mat that you'd see in the new yorker as well and kind of that tinny hollow sound when you close the trunk but nonetheless very large no problem putting luggage in that and if we pop the hood we'll see the 440 that was so famous as an engine for chrysler for many years 440 was standard in the imperial at 225 horsepower 73 went down to 215 then it perked back up a little bit in 74. and again in 72 they went to net horsepower rating so if you look at the 71 imperial this motor was rated at 335 gross horsepower take that number and multiply by about 70 percent you have the net horsepower rating and the net horsepower rating is with all the accessories and the exhaust and the air cleaner on the gross horsepower rating is not but you can see this is a 12 000 mile car that still has some witness marks in different places there and here and here and even there which is pretty cool so i haven't detailed the engine bay i've said in other videos i just prefer it to look original in stock that way you know it has been messed with the only thing i've really changed under hood is this auto temp box this is the box for the automatic climate control that wasn't working when i got it i had to put a new box on and then fix another vacuum leak under hood which was caused by the pcv valve unfortunately a lot of these cars met their demise in demo derbies for one big reason look at the distance between the grille and the radiator so they could take a pretty big impact without having the radiator and that cradle pushed back so they were a big favor in the demo derbies and actually the imperials from 66 and earlier were even bigger favorites because those were full frame if you ever see the underside of a 66 imperial you'll see the frame has basically splits in three pieces up front here ahead of the bumper and it's the beefiest frame i think i've ever seen on a car so those were outlawed from demo derbies for a long time because they were so strong but you have the basic 440 here again 225 horsepower this came with a holley 4160 carburetor that corvettes used for a while as well they were kind of troublesome this car i have the stock carburetor came with an edelbrock which i'm actually quite pleased with how it runs and how easy it is to tune so i've kept it on there for now and i can always go back to stock if i want later chrysler had this two piston v compressor as opposed to the york two piston horizontal compressor that ford used in the six piston gm compressor this actually works quite well very cold air conditioning and then you have all these kind of coffee cans and other stuff like this this is a vacuum reservoir for the hvac system so that even if you're accelerating you don't lose vacuum you can't operate the doors the blower switch doesn't work etc other unique feature for this year chrysler had electronic ignition so they were quite an early introducer of electronic ignition as standard on this car now other makes did have it earlier pontiac even had it as a option in the mid 60s i believe but chrysler was probably the most progressive in implementing it more broadly across the lineup and i would say ford was the laggard you had to really wait until 73.74 for ford uh and actually more or less 74 for ford to make it standard across their lineup and gm was about similar chrysler if you got a upper end car in 72 or some cases 71 you would get that electronic ignition and there's still some another reason why i don't like to detail these too much there's still witness marks on the valve covers and if i took them off and repainted them i lose all that originality you know the stamping on the air conditioning compressor and all that so just personal preference huge hood though absolutely huge hood all right let's take it for a drive all right let's go for a drive and hear the wonderful music that every mopar fan wants to hear ready gotta love the highland park hummingbird starter put the auto temp on there we go close the windows and we're off so the first feeling you get when you sit behind the wheel is that this speedometer is huge and you certainly don't need glasses to read what speed that you're going but again the full complement of gauges for that time was very rare and welcome ford's in particular had a lot of idiot lights to the point that in 75 on the fords they didn't even have a distinguishing idiot light for engine temperature oil pressure issues it just said engine so this is quite nice you can tell what's going on the other thing that i would say you notice when you're driving this car as opposed to other cars of the era is that it's not a soft and pillowy ride at all so people when i go to car shows say oh that thing's a lanyard it must just ooze over bumps and i respond actually not it doesn't it's not that it's unpleasant but it's noticeably firmer in particular than a ford and handles much better than a ford the steering has some good road feel to it which is surprising for the era of normally power boot overly boosted steering you can see there's no left turn indicator there the only places out at the fender tip but in spite of this being about a 5200 pound car the 440 definitely gets out of its way just fine no issues and i would say it's relatively quiet in here too not quite as quiet as the lincoln's were or even the mercuries of the time but much quieter than my new yorker so even though the new yorker was not a cheap car i would say the sound deadening coupled with the fact that this car is unibody as is the new yorker made it a bit harder to deaden the noise out but this imperial they did a really nice job over the new yorker in making sure that you didn't hear the exterior world nearly as much so it's far more pleasant place to be and it's actually quite fun that this big car handles so well it's pretty shocking that it doesn't lean in the corners it's got about an inch diameter stabilizer bar front but the torsion bar suspension really works wonders in terms of cornering stability so it just depends on what you want if you want a floaty mushy ride get a ford if you want a stiff suspension that handles well get a chrysler and if you want something in between get a gm that's the best way i can describe it to you but this car is an absolute joy to drive it's gets so many looks it looks like nothing else the seats are comfortable another thing i would say is because the ride is stiff for some reason you know all the way back to early 60s chryslers that i've driven i don't know if the seat engineers talk to the chassis engineers because you kind of pogo stick a little bit as you go up and down uh bumps on relatively broken pavement and the resonance frequency of the seat seems to just be excited by the suspension sometimes so you're kind of sitting here as you go over bumps and you know you kind of do one of these things as you go over them not on all roads but i would say on unnaturally broken roads but in spite of that if i would have purchased this car new in 72 you know i would have been happy the motor is smooth quiet powerful the handling is great the ride you know isn't bad i wouldn't call it an excellent ride but it's not a bad ride and just the quality of the interior particularly the seats and the unique features there's even a lighted a light here right in front of the keyhole that illuminates the keyhole at night so you don't have to search for the place to put in your key ford did that on some of their vehicles where the keyhole was backlit but i've never seen one where it was backlit where the key was on the column so in general if you want a vintage luxury car this is tough to be and the styling is a 10 out of 10 from my perspective especially the four-door the two-door i think looks cartoonish i love it because the rear quarter panel is immense especially in 72 and three where they changed the roof styling uh it just made accentuated the length of the car even more but the four-door is a beautifully proportioned car the only downside to these cars if you want one is that they're rare they only made about twelve thousand sedans and twenty five hundred two thousand-ish coupes in 72 and not many more in 73 and this body style was really only unique to those two years if you want this front end you can get a 69 70 or 71 imperial if you don't mind the different back end actually with sequential turn signals in 69 even but the 72 is my favorite of the bunch and just is a wonderful car to drive hope you enjoyed this drive and full review of my 72 imperial thanks for watching

Channel: Rare Classic Cars

Views: 132,209

Rating: 4.9415684 out of 5

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Id: NhQC6Qm5ZwI

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021