Chrysler Imperial 1969-1973 G4

Chrysler’s Imperial spent 1969 through 1973 as the longest postwar personal luxury car short of a limousine, and it hid some genuinely strange engineering under all that sheet metal, including the first four-wheel anti-lock braking system offered on an American car and a vinyl roof that mysteriously faded into a purple paisley pattern. The G4 Imperial is far more interesting than its sales figures suggest.

There is a certain kind of car that gets overlooked precisely because it was designed to be dignified. No stripes, no scoops, no wing on the deck lid, nothing that photographs well from a low angle. So the Chrysler Imperial of 1969 through 1973 sits quietly at the far end of the collector spectrum while everyone crowds around the E-bodies, and almost nobody mentions that it was the first car built in the United States that you could order with four-wheel anti-lock brakes. There are a handful of other details in that five-year run that are equally strange, including a factory vinyl roof that turned purple and revealed a pattern nobody could explain. This is the car that hid its best stories under a very conservative suit.

Fuselage Styling: Borrowing the Shape of an Airliner

The 1969 model introduced Chrysler’s fuselage body, and the name was not marketing decoration. The cabin was narrow at the rocker panels, bulged outward at shoulder height, then tucked back in toward the roofline, exactly the way an aircraft passenger compartment is shaped, with curved side glass to match. The practical payoff was interior room: roughly three and a half more inches of shoulder space in the four-door sedan without making the unibody car any longer or wider than the previous year. Sharing a number of body panels with the less expensive Chrysler Newport kept the production math workable, and 22,083 buyers went for it in 1969, the strongest year of the generation.

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1969 and the Last of the Pillared Sedans

That first year also carried a few distinctions that never came back. Sequential turn signals appeared for 1969 only. It was the last year a pillared sedan was on the order sheet. And the newly introduced Imperial LeBaron coupe measured 229.7 inches bumper to bumper, which made the lineup the longest postwar personal luxury car short of an outright limousine. If you have ever stood next to one in a parking lot, the dimension is not an abstraction. It is a physical fact you have to walk around.

One Engine, One Transmission, No Debate

Powertrain choice was refreshingly simple, in the sense that there was not one. Every G4 Imperial got the 440 cubic inch Wedge V8 bolted to the A727 TorqueFlite three-speed automatic. Chrysler’s 440 was the same basic architecture doing hard-charging duty in the Road Runner and the ‘Cuda, but in Imperial trim it was tuned for effortless torque rather than quarter-mile times, which suited a car of this mass far better. The TorqueFlite, meanwhile, has one of the best durability reputations of any American automatic of the era, and it is a significant reason these cars still drive well today when they have been maintained.

1970: Fewer Buyers, Fewer Fender Skirts

For 1970 the changes were mostly cosmetic and mostly subtractive. A new egg-crate grille replaced the previous fascia, the shark-gill parking lights gave way to a squared-off configuration, and the fender skirts disappeared for that year only, offset by additional chrome trim on the rocker panels with vinyl trim available as an option. Sales told a harsher story: production fell by half to 11,822 units. The Crown series was retired at the end of the year, leaving LeBaron as a coupe or hardtop as the only models on offer going forward.

The Anti-Lock Brakes Almost Nobody Ordered

Then came the genuinely important footnote. For 1971, the Imperial became the first American-built car that could be ordered with four-wheel anti-lock brakes, a Bendix system that worked on all four corners at a time when the technology was essentially unheard of on this continent. It was also a rarely chosen option, which makes an ABS-equipped car a legitimately uncommon find among the 11,569 units built that year. That same year, the Imperial Eagle logo left the hood, replaced by the word Imperial, with the rear deck adding “by Chrysler” underneath.

The Mod Top Mystery and the Roofs That Turned Purple

The 1971 cars also produced one of the odder factory mysteries of the era. White or black vinyl roofs were standard, but a small number of burgundy-painted Imperials wore burgundy vinyl tops that faded to a purplish color and revealed a paisley pattern underneath. Speculation held that this was leftover Mod Top material from the sportier Dodge and Plymouth lines, printed over for Imperial use. Chrysler designer and spokesman Jeffrey Godshall pushed back in a Collectible Automobile article, stating that the vinyl had simply faded to purple paisley after weather exposure. Chrysler replaced a large number of the faulty tops under full warranty, but survivors still turn up, and the debate has never fully closed.

1972 and 1973: Bigger, Rounder, and the Longest Car in America

The last two years went in the direction the whole industry was heading: bigger. For 1972 the sheet metal was completely changed, rounder in profile, visually heavier, with the character line along each side deleted, a chrome strip added over the fender seam running forward from the rear windows, a revamped front fascia and new vertically configured teardrop taillights with shield-shaped side markers carrying an eagle in the center. Sales recovered somewhat to 15,796. For 1973, impact-absorbing bumper guards pushed overall length to 235.3 inches, making it the longest non-limousine production car built on this continent, and 16,729 rolled off the line, making it the strongest year since 1969.

The Two Black Imperials That Ended Up on Capitol Hill

The final footnote is the best one. Two black 1973 Imperials went to the U.S. Secret Service, and they were last officially used to carry President Ronald Reagan and his entourage to the swearing-in ceremony on Capitol Hill in January 1981. That is a genuinely remarkable service life for a production sedan: bought new during the Nixon administration, still trusted with a presidential motorcade eight years and two administrations later. It also tells you what these cars actually were underneath the fuselage styling and the acres of chrome. A 440 Wedge and a TorqueFlite in a heavy, well-insulated unibody is a durable, unbothered combination, and it stayed in federal service long after the model line itself had been discontinued. For a car that spent its whole life being underestimated, ending up on Capitol Hill is a fittingly understated final credit.

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