In 1963 Chrysler did something very unusual, and rather forward-looking. It created a new top trim version of the Chrysler New Yorker that came loaded with every possible option — including air conditioning — and a higher quality interior as standard equipment. Given that the Chrysler brand was down a notch from the true luxury brands including the Imperial which didn’t come standard with many of these features, the New Yorker Salon, more expensive than an Imperial Crown, was a highly unusual and bold exercise.
Given that only 2,214 Salons were ever built in 1963 and 1964, we can conclude that it was a failed experiment. But that’s not to say it wasn’t a rather compelling car, as Motor Trend discovered.
The only choices in buying a New Yorker Salon were the color and upholstery fabric. Technically, there were two options: an adjustable steering wheel and a limited slip differential. The benefit over an Imperial (or Cadillac and Lincoln) were a relatively more compact car, with 7″ less wheelbase, 10″ less length and 700 lbs less weight compared to the Imperial (as well as a lower price when comparably equipped). This all enhanced the Salon’s dynamic qualities considerably, with essentially no real meaningful tradeoff. It was a foreshadowing of downsized luxury cars to come; something of a Seville, in other words, even if it wasn’t quite as compact as that.
The Salon was deemed “extremely pleasant to drive…that rare combination of pillow soft riding qualities and good handling.” Pumping up the tires to 28 psi made handling only better, making it both a freeway cruiser as well as a back roads bomber (in the context of the times for a big car).
not original wheels and wheel covers
Given that it had the Imperial’s big 340 hp 413 cubic inch V8, acceleration was reasonably quick, resulting in a 0-60 time of 9.7 and a 1/4 mile ET of 17.8 @ 83 mph. Still not as fast as the very quick ’64 Cadillac, or the ‘64 Buick Riviera and Electra. Actually that 0-60 time is not all that impressive, but MT back then was not likely to say so. It was certainly fast enough for the expected jobs at hand. It did have a low (numerical) 2.76:1 rear axle ratio, which would have a bit if a dulling effect on acceleration but contributed to more serene and efficient cruising.
Predictably, Chrysler’s Torqueflite automatic came in for the usual praise: smooth, quick shifts, and a very useful intermediate range.
It appeared that Chrysler had softened the suspension from previously tested ones. That was a concern at first, but although perhaps not quite as crisp and capable as in the past, handling was still better than average. “Here’s one full size sedan we felt at home in on a winding road.” Of course “Steady highway cruising is the Salon’s forte.” It felt very secure at 100 mph or better, and at its top speed of 115 the engine wasn’t near its redline. Fuel consumption was 11.3 mpg of premium over the 1500 mile test.
The Salon came standard with AutoPilot (no, not quite like Tesla’s), Chrysler’s cruise control. Along with the very comfortable interior and air conditioning, it made long distance trips exceptionally comfortable. Of course, the standards of the time were very different; wafting along in an air-conditioned comfortable fast sedan with the cruise control on was still a big deal still in 1964.
The Chrysler’s big drum brakes were also up to the task and standards of the times, or more like exceeded them.
The Salon’s interior (the car in this image looks to have non-original upholstery) came in for lots of praise too.
The Salon’s upholstery were “Beautiful Jacquard fabrics” trimmed in leather.
And a deep-grain vinyl roof was standard, to make sure the world knew this wasn’t just any old Chrysler.
MT closes with a prediction that many buyers will like the option of buying a fully-equipped luxury car that costs some $1000 less than a comparably-equipped Cadillac, Lincoln or Imperial. It made sense to MT, but then car reviewers tend to have more a sophisticated appreciation than the market at large. Undoubtedly a Chrysler with a starting price higher than an Imperial’s didn’t go over well with luxury car buyers at the time. The brand prestige factor just wasn’t there, given how popular Chrysler Newports were.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1964 Chrysler 300 K – Smile When You Say K Car
Curbside Classic: 1964 Chrysler Newport – Chrysler’s Great Downsizing, Chapter 2.
Vintage MT Road Test: 1964 Cadillac Sedan DeVille – The Fastest And Best Classic Cadillac
A puzzling marketing decision by Chrysler to make this, and not the Imperial, a totally equipped, halo luxury ride. If successful, it would likely have poached sales from Imperial. Maybe they thought that this would compete favorably with Olds 98 or Buick Electra, but this was the sixties, when GM was the 1,000 gorilla. Chrysler did have a small, loyal customer base, but conquest sales from GM were rare. And GM was always careful not to have Olds or Buick encroach into Cadillac territory.
I remember these and still like how it looks .
I seem to recall the 413 C.I.D. 4BBL V8 being a very strong truck engine, we used them n three yard Dodge dump trucks in ’70/’71 .
It handled well on bias ply tires, imagine how much better it’d be on modern radials and gas shocks .
-Nate
I think what killed it for the Salon, and New Yorker in general, is that they just looked too much like the Newport, and were the same size, even. So here you have a fully-loaded, $6,000 car that basically looks like a Newport that started at something like $2964.
If you bought an Electra, Ninety-Eight, or even a Bonneville, you got a car that was larger than the equivalent base models, and the difference was noticeable enough that you could tell which was the nicer car, just from a quick glance.
Still, even at $6,000, that price doesn’t seem too out of line, considering all the standard features. I knew someone who had a 1961 DeSoto 4-door hardtop, that was just about fully-loaded, with a/c and power everything, and he said its MSRP was around $5,000. So, an extra $1,000 for a car that has three years of inflation baked into its price, plus a bigger engine, nicer interior, etc, doesn’t seem TOO radical.
I’m surprised the car wasn’t quicker, though. I always hear about what great performers the Mopar engines were back then, yet this car took 9.7 seconds to get from 0-60, while the ’64 Cadillac did it in 8.5. But, looking at the axle ratios, the Caddy used a 3.21:1, whereas the Salon had a 2.76:1. That probably had a lot do with it.
FWIW, I have a book that has a road test of a 1957 DeSoto Firedome convertible, and it managed 0-60 in something like 9.7 seconds, despite just having the 341-2bbl and 270 hp. However, it also didn’t have the extra drag of air conditioning, was no doubt a bit lighter overall, even if it was a larger car, and it used a 3.31:1 axle. Still, somehow, I guess I was just thinking this New Yorker Salon should be a bit quicker than it was.
I agree that the axle ratio was holding this car back, along with those 9.00×14 tires that gave it an even taller effective axle ratio because they were around 28.5 inches in diameter. The math says that, according to the data sheet, the engine was turning about 2200 rpm at 60, which is pretty slow for a non-overdrive equipped car. With that being said, it’s clear that there were wide variances in tune among these press cars, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this one wasn’t as sharp as the others.
Aaron ;
The 413 engine was no slouch when equipped with a 4 barrel carby .
I doubt that high final drive ration caused any lack of acceleration .
-Nate
This 413 had a four barrel carb. And high compression. And yes, a high final drive ratio will very much affect acceleration on any car. That’s just plain science.
In the 60s my family only drove Chryslers, so we had a lot of the full size Chryslers floating around. At least one from every model. I remember when these Salons first hit the showrooms in the San Fernando Valley California. They did seem like an upscale Chrysler option, but Chryslers had the reputation of being well built practical cars versus what GM was doing. It wasn’t until 1965 that The Ford Motor Company upped their game with the LTDs and Mercury Marquis. Once they did they were playing to win. As I got older I became a full on Ford man and still am today. But I do like the Chryslers from the late 50s and 60s. In the 70s, Chrysler’s financial problems started to show in the cars they were building. They were still well engineered, but you could see the cheaper looks of the interior materials and that seemed to stick with Chrysler through the rest of the 80s and 90s. My dad had a 63 4 door hardtop Newport, and my uncle had a 64 2 door 300 hardtop, so I grew up in the back seats of Chryslers. They were well built and were very reliable. And by the way, I really liked the squared of steering wheel, they were definitely eye catching.
I really like these. One of my father’s patients had a 1963 in turquoise metallic – I used to wash and wax it for them. The 1964 Salon had the same interior door handles as my grandfather’s 1965 New Yorker 4dr.- handles which I still regard as the best.
Other than that I like the front and rear of the 1963 much better, the front is far more comely and I think the addition of rear fins by EE were not fortunate – but he thoroughly redeemed himself with the home run he hit in 1965.
https://www.mecum.com/lots/487879/
While the exterior design looks very American, the instrument panel appears almost late 1950s European. Brawny-looking styling is busy. Would definitely give the concurrent generally cleaner and more distinctive GM exterior style, a strong edge.
One of those 2,214 Chrysler New Yorker Salons belonged to our family friend Peter Berni. My impression was that it looked more luxurious inside than my Dad’s Cadillac!
I sure don’t remember these ads, or ever taking note of one of these on the street—but I like the marketing angle, and the car!
I just now learned that the Chrysler Building’s showroom for the public was called the “Chrysler (International) Salon”—mostly displaying Chrysler’s wares, but sometimes art & photo exhibitions, WWII showings of weapons & vehicles, etc. The newspapers seem to mention this “Chrysler Salon” site into the early 1960s:
One more:
Thanx George ;
I like the 1936 photo with the *one* guy descending the escalator looking sharply at the good looking Coupe on his right……
-Nate
I think this Salon suffered from the same problem as the New Yorker in general – The buyer of an Olds 98 or a Buick Electra got a car that was a big, easily identifiable step up from the “regular” Olds or Buick. The New Yorker was always a better trim package on top of the “regular” Chrysler, especially after the New Yorkers lost a small wheelbase stretch (that was not always easily visible).
I find it odd that this came along just as the newly styled Imperial was in process or in showrooms. I wonder if this was the test of a concept to see how a super luxe New Yorker would do against the full-luxury segment, to weigh the benefits of a new Imperial. I think Chrysler got its answer.
It has been a long time ago, but I remember my 63 Cadillac as a faster car than my 64 Imperial was. I always wondered if the 4 bbl 413 in my car was fully up to snuff, but now I suspect that it probably was. Both of those cars, interestingly, exhaled through single exhaust systems.
I was surprised to learn of this car, because I only knew the Salon trim level as it was used in the late ’70s (when it was used on some Plymouths) through the early ’90s when it denoted the bottom-of-the-line New Yorker after decades of GM-style name debasement. I like it though and it would have been a strong contender if I were transported back in time and looking for a comfortable cruiser in 1963 or ’64. Odd that in the first advertisement shown the car is referred to just as a Salon with no mention of New Yorker, even though that name is prominent on the car itself.
The squared-off steering wheel in the ’63 model (shown in some photos here) was an oddity, one I never understood, which didn’t stop it from reappearing on the ’70s Austin Allegro and in slightly altered form on new Corvettes and a few other sporty cars. I was surprised though how useful the slight flatenning of the steering wheel bottom helps with ingress in my current ride.
It’s unusual to see standard headrests in a car of this vintage, and more useful ones than Detroit fitted to ’70s cars.
Many years ago I came across one of these in a small Ontario junkyard way in the boonies. I thought it was interesting but didn’t realize til now how rare it was. This would have been very early 1980’s and as I remember it was weather-beaten but still solid for the great white salted north.
They were willing to sell it so I hope it was rescued and not crushed.
So we know at least one of the 2,214 made it to Canada.. I wonder if there were any others?
I encountered one New Yorker Salon, a 1964 that belonged to a production manager at a plant where I had one of my first jobs after high school. In turquoise metallic with white vinyl top canopy and white leather interior, which the owner claimed to have special ordered. Even as an eight-year-old car at the time, it was immaculate inside and out.
If the concept was to more effectively compete with Olds 98 and Buick Electra, Chrysler didn’t understand that it had to be recognizably more than a fancier Newport which comprised three-quarters of the Chryslers the public would encounter. GM understood that for buyers to shell out the extra dollars for an Olds 98 or Buick Electra, it had to be obviously longer with its own upscale styling versus the 88 or LeSabre. Chrysler’s unibody limited how much unique tooling they could commit to a lower volume model.
Some family friends had a standard NYer of this vintage. They chose color poorly, a non-metallic pinkish-beige, without gloss in my memory. The wife was constantly tipsy, so it was surprising that it lasted until their ’76 Olds 98, which she backed into our neighbor’s ugly new fence, to Mom’s apprehension and delight.
Interesting. Great concept that didn’t work, partially because Chrysler couldn’t market like Ford and GM and Imperial was sold in the same showroom. The car itself is lovely.
Pontiac offered the Grand Ville as its top luxury car from 1971-75. It was equipped and finished like a C-body Buick Electra and Olds 98 but built on the smaller B-Body shared with LeSabre/Delta 88/Caprice and its cheaper Pontiac breathren. The idea was to keep Lemans, Firebird, and Grand Prix buyers in the fold who needed something bigger and more luxurious while still a “roadable” Pontiac. .
The gambit was fairly successful from 71-73, but the first energy crisis and recession killed demand. That kind of buyer started looking at German cars., not bloat.
Chrysler made some great, beautiful cars in the early & mid 60’s & the ’63-’64 Salon is definitely one of them. It was a sophisticated idea but perhaps not an easy sell. As Peter Engel points out, it was sold in the same showroom as the Imperial. A key variable might have been how much Chrysler dealers embraced the idea of the Salon. I can imagine that a lot of dealers steered customers towards an Imperial, in the ‘bigger bang for your buck’ 60’s while the Salon got stuck in the back of the showroom.
Oddly, in the first ad above for the 1964 edition, I notice they call it the “Chrysler Salon” in the headline, rather than the New Yorker Salon.
My paternal grandfather bought a ‘63 (or’64?) New Yorker new. He was generally a GM guy, and drove Oldsmobiles before and Bucks after the Chrysler. He passed it on to my father as a high-mileage 4-5 year old car. As a little kid, I was enthralled with it. Dad’s recollection is that it was pretty troublesome in its old age and he preferred GM steering. I think it ended up in the junkyard around 1970 after it lost reverse gear with well over 100k miles on it.
Between the New Yorker and my other grandfather’s ’66 Dart and ‘67 Monaco 2-doors I became very accustomed to the sounds, smells and feel of Mopars. And the push-button tranny and rectangular wheel in the New Yorker kept my mind busy wondering about what else could be designed differently in a car and still work well. My earliest memory of a family road trip w was taking the old Chrysler up to Manitoba. My parents bought into the latest safety features for kids and had it fitted to that car: 4-strap harnesses anchored to the rear package shelf. I think I would have bounced around like a yo-yo if we’d been in an accident, but it might have kept me from being ejected.
Family lore says that my grandfather drove his new Chrysler to Detroit to take some GM executives to a business lunch. They let it be known that he would not pull a stunt like that again, and afterward there were always both big GM and Ford sedans around for whoever was visiting those companies. After the Chrysler, Dad drove only GM cars until the mid ’80s.