FULL REVIEW - 1972 Chrysler New Yorker 440 V8 - Fuselage Era Chryslers

A fuselage Chrysler coming up next .

Hi , this is Adam .

Welcome to my rare classic car channel today .

Another fuselage a Mopar vehicle for the Chrysler fans .

This 1972 New Yorker , this is a really rare car these days , they didn't sell well new , even though I absolutely love the way this fuselage styling looked .

It's hard to think of a bad car from this era of Chrysler design just from an aesthetic standpoint , they're so long and trim looking , in spite of the fact that these cars are huge , but in any case , the fuselage era of design came into Chrysler in the 1969 model year after a number of years of what I would call very conventionally styled cars in the mid 60 S .

And that was arguably in response to engle being hired to replace Virgil Ax .

Virgil Ax had been fired from Chrysler in the early sixties as a result of the relatively poor sales in particular of the early 60 S models that were introduced by Chrysler , whether it's the 60 one imperial with the freestanding pod headlights or the early sixties furies and Palera darts valis that all just had a kind of funky look to them .

By the way , if you look at a picture of a 62 Plymouth , and then you find old design photos , that vehicle was actually going to be very asymmetrical to the point that it had a split in the front of the vehicle that was off center and also had three tail lights on one side and one on the other .

So look up a 62 Plymouth and the design that you see that made it to production was actually less radical than what the original design proposal was .

In any event , Chrysler let go in the early sixties and hired Alwin Engle from Ford where he participated in a number of famous designs , most arguably , most importantly , the 61 Continental which he oversaw to some degree .

But I believe it was really a car that was done by a gentleman named Wes Dahlberg and that was a seminal car still is today something that's really tough to replicate .

But you can almost see themes of that vehicle , the 61 Continental in this vehicle , just how clean the side is , albeit it has more tumble home and curvature than the Continental did , which was very upright .

But this is just a super clean , long , wide and frankly tall car .

It's two inches taller than a contemporary G M or Ford vehicle of the era .

So it just gives it this feeling of somehow being s spelt with this very sleek , nicely radius body curvature and yet it's a tall car when you walk up to it , it just feels bigger than a contemporary GM Reform car the year mostly because those again , they were almost two inches lower in overall height and even the cow height .

So this cow here comes up to above your waistline , which is pretty rare for a vehicle of this era .

But the fuselage era Chrysler again started in 1969 continued till about 73 .

Although one could argue the 73 redesigns , some of them with the new bumper standard in the front kind of ruined some of the fuselage era look in particular for the New Yorker , which got this really boxy front end and did away with .

I think this this rather cool looking grill that they had in 72 71 also had a really neat , slightly different grill and this loop bumper that when it's around here and the fuselage , that term for design just refers to the sleek body sides that have the curvature of an aircraft fuselage .

And there's some really neat design features about them like the bumpers that extend all the way up .

The 69 imperial is even more extreme with the bumper going all the way up allegedly to help protect , you know , the car from rear end accidents , et cetera .

Although this is not a reinforced bumper nor is the front loop style reinforced .

Hence the redesign that came in 73 when the five mile an hour frontal impact standard came into being .

And then by 74 it was a five mile an hour rear bumper standard .

So the bumpers got pretty big over that time period .

So this New Yorker slotted in above the Newport , below the New Yorker Brome and the Imperial .

And as I said , at the beginning , this car really did not sell well in sedan format .

It sold less than 10,000 units .

Yeah .

And it didn't matter if it were a coup or a hard top or this , the hardtop was actually the best selling .

And this four door post sedan sold , I believe seven or 8000 , the hard top sold somewhere between 10 and 12,000 units per year , which was really , you know , not great .

And I hypothesize that part of the reason for this is that Chrysler priced this New Yorker , not the New Yorker Brome , the standard New Yorker right on top of the Oldsmobile , 88 sorry , an Oldsmobile 98 luxury sedan .

So the upper level 98 trim as well as the Buick Electro Limited .

So this car was about $4900 new , which was actually a little more than that 49 50 ish , almost $5000 in base price , which was not at all a cheap car for 1972 .

That was a pretty expensive car .

And , you know , putting this up against a top of the line , old 98 or Buick Electra Limited .

That's pretty tough , especially given this wasn't a New Yorker Brome , New Yorker Brome stickered for a couple $100 more .

And that would have put the base price above even the top Buick Electra or the Old 98 .

I think that's one reason why these didn't sell well and one could argue that it was priced right on top of the mercury marquee .

Uh And really the price that followed the Ford Mercury pricing .

So the New Yorker Brome was about the same price as the marquee Brome .

And this New York was about the same price as the marquee .

The problem is the Ford , uh the Mercury didn't sell well either .

So I think their pricing strategy was arguably a bit flawed and certainly didn't , didn't help Chrysler .

But Chrysler really at this point had never quite recovered from the early sixties when they introduced very radical exeter designs and made some product planning errors and downsizing cars like the fury to a smaller body , an intermediate body , which they did arguably in response to , they heard a rumor that GM was going to downsize their vehicles significantly and they wanted to beat them to it .

And GM did not do that .

GM took some weight out of their vehicles when they were reintroduced for 61 shortened them slightly but didn't take them down a whole platform size .

So Chrysler was caught off guard and if you look as an example .

Take a look at a 62 dodge 880 and look at the back end of that vehicle .

You'll notice it's the same as the Chrysler from the era .

So Chrysler hastily cobbled together a dodge a full size dodge that they called the 880 when they realized that they had made a planning blunder .

And to be honest , Chrysler never really recovered from that era .

They , for the next several decades went through a series of ups and downs and ups and downs .

Um everything from after the fuselage era , the next generation of cars that were introduced .

First of all , they kept some of the fuselage era designs even though they refreshed them .

They kept this big car around like the New Yorker and the New Yorker , bro until 78 was the last year .

And then they came out with the R body Chryslers which were pretty big for the era and had rather lackluster quality , let's say , which did not sell well and pushed Chrysler further to the brink until Lea Coca famously testified before Congress got them a bailout and they found some religion with the K car and in particular , the mini van , which was a brainchild of Hal Sperlich who Koka recruited from Ford , both AOA and he Sperlich were Ford fires .

So Chrysler during their most successful time period , I shouldn't say most successful but very successful time period of some of the eighties and into the nineties had a number of Ford fires or people who left Ford just two steps ahead of the sheriff , including Bob Lutz , who came from Ford as well .

So Lea Bob Lotz Hal Belich , all X Ford , people who kind of put Chrysler back on the map and the car company to watch in the nineties yet I digress a little bit so back to this fuselage er , car , as I mentioned , this was priced right on top of the old 98 L S , the top trim line , not the regency , admittedly , but in the vehicle electro limited , so tough competition for this vehicle to face and it just consequently did not sell well .

And most of the full size Chryslers and sea bodies in this era did not sell well .

And I think some of it was pricing and some of it was the features that you got and you know , a few other things I will say that there are a number of things that Chrysler did very well and I'll step back here so you can see it .

One thing that they tended to do well in this era was packaging and you notice the rear door is significantly longer than the front door here and that allows for very , very wide entry and the door also opens to almost a 90 degree angle , so great entry into the passenger compartment here .

This front seat is all the way back and I have a ton of leg room .

I'm six ft one and I could sit back here with no issue .

There's also a lot of head room in this car because of the fuselage styling that's rather tall .

But one could argue , you know , compared to a 98 L si don't know that the materials in this are , you know , as nice .

These door panels are pretty chins .

I think it's funny , you know , the back door panel doesn't have the New Yorker emblem which you see on the front , which was added in 72 .

It wasn't there in 71 .

So I guess they thought the door panel looked kind of cheap and threw that on there to gussy .

It up falls , fails , throw a few recent and crests on the car make the buyer feel like they got something luxurious .

Yeah .

And in the front seat , oh , Chrysler always had a great warning buzzer .

Lots of room in the front seat here and you can see passenger side is not a bad place to be this dashboard though .

You know , I don't know .

It's it .

How do I feel about it ?

It's almost the same as the imperial , the imperial though .

Does have a full compliment of gauges .

If you watch my video on that , you'll notice that uh it had the imperial had a temperature gauge as well as the volt meter plus an oil pressure gauge .

This just has the volt meter or the alternator uh indicator there , no temperature .

It does have , you know , the idiot lights and it has a cold light which the motor's not cold right now , so it won't illuminate .

But this dashboard is uh kind of somewhat cheap looking .

That's my gps right there too .

This is soft plastic .

This is all hard down here and this is metal like a metal grain door , which is pretty sweet .

I have not seen that on other makes , I will say that the speedometer is very legible .

It feels huge if you're not used to it .

And all the controls are , you know , rather large accessible .

I would say uh it doesn't take an excessive reach .

This does have an aftermarket radio , a cassette radio that somebody put in years ago , it came in stock with an AM radio .

Thankfully , the person I bought it from didn't cut the dash and I have the original radio , I just don't mind having F M so I haven't replaced it and it does have manual air conditioning .

You could get in these , the auto temp system which my Imperial has .

You could also get dual air conditioners .

So this car does have the single air conditioner up front , but you could get a dual air conditioner that had outlets in the back there .

That's just the rear to fogger outlet in the middle .

Um If you really wanted to hang meat in the car , you were in a warm climate and that was something unique that , that Chrysler offered in this era .

They had a number of , of neat features that they had .

It's funny if you watch the dealer training video compared to the Ford , uh or the G M , they kind of complain that the glove box for the G M cars is hard to reach because it's generally down here and they're touting that theirs is up here .

Uh At the same time you notice there's no air vents for the air conditioning over here , the only two upper register vents are those two right there .

There's nothing on the driver side .

The only other air vents you have are those right there for the air conditioning .

And down here there are a couple of little swing doors that you can open in the H VAC system at the bottom if you want to let a little cool air in at the floor level .

But I just find it humorous that they , in the one sales video , they tout the fact that this glove box location makes it easily accessible for the driver and the passenger .

But it created the deletion of these vents so they could have this big glove box that was easily accessible .

And then in the next year's video , when they redid the dash for 74 they tout the fact that the dashboard has more vents than anybody else .

Uh And I can't remember if I think there's six vents on those .

There's two in the middle , there's maybe there's even more .

Um , and they move the glove box down to the middle on the next generation of a dashboard .

So other , you know , Chrysler things I would say that are different from others .

This steering wheel is small in diameter , which they all were small , but this one is slightly smaller and it sits closer to the driver .

You're almost in kind of , it sounds funny to say , but a racing style position in a Chrysler with a small wheel that's quite close to the driver .

The G M and Fords , I would say , had more of what I'll call the vice president feel to them where it's more arms out here , even with the seat all the way back , this wheel is relatively close to me , even though the pedals are , you know , a decent distance .

You also have the vent poles , even though this is an air conditioned car where you can , uh , you can open the vent , the kick well , vents on either side , there's a pole for each side which was starting to be rare for air conditioned cars .

Chrysler kept that .

Even my Imperial has it .

Chrysler kept a lot of , I'll call it old school features longer than others , including vent windows .

You could still get even in 1978 on some of the New Yorkers , which were long gone from other makes by then .

So they did keep some of the , uh , like I called it old fashioned things like enough room to have a hat on .

Lots of head room in this car .

Nice headliner .

Only one dome light though , whereas the Mercury and the Fords also had lights in the sea pillars .

And I don't believe that there's a kick well light on either side either .

No , there's not .

So they saved a little money there .

Loop pile , carpeting as opposed to uh the cut pile , you know , shag .

There's also not as much sound deadening in this car as you would find in a G M or Ford of the era .

It's , there's more wind noise , I would say tire noise , some of which can be attributable to the fact that this is a unibody car as opposed to a full frame vehicle .

Although I will say in spite of being unibody , this has very , very beefy sub frames underneath it in the front and the rear and it's also a stiff ride .

So we'll go for a ride in a bit , but this is not a cushy riding car .

It's actually pretty firm for there .

I would say it's , it'd be the equivalent of if you got the heavy duty suspension in G M or Ford and the standard car with the torsion bars up front and the leaf spring rear suspension .

So this car did come with aftermarket formats that appear to be very period and I have not touched them .

I think they're pretty sweet .

Or else you gonna find formats like that .

Let's take a look at the trunk .

This car does have vacuum operated trunk release , you push the button there and in the trunk opens .

Let's take a look .

The doors close nicely with minimal effort .

And I have jumper cables in here .

Not because of anything that's necessary for this car .

I'm going to go pump air up and tires and a number of my other cars and the connector on this air compressor broke .

So I have to use jumper cables too cheap to buy a new compressor because that one works just fine .

But you can see still the original spare tire in here , original trunk mat and carpeting very big trunk , 21 cubic feet .

So it can hold a lot .

Here's the vacuum activated mechanism that opens the trunk .

When you push the button inside , it does have kind of a tinny sound when you close the trunk though , which all the Chrysler of the era have more so than GM and Fords .

And the other funny thing about the Chryslers is everything's a bit opposite .

The odometers turn the opposite way from the G M odometer on this , the trunk M .

If you were going to open this trunk as a G M car , you'd swing it counterclockwise Chrysler , you swing it clockwise , would have had this hint the other way .

And Chryslers , you put the key in if you're a G M fan upside down .

So the keys always go in like this , which according to a friend who's a Chrysler engineer from the era they did because it allegedly helped in winter time for the lock cylinders not to freeze .

I will trust him on that .

He is diehard Chrysler fan , worked at Chrysler during the era , but just look at how long and big this car is pretty impressive .

Let's pop the hood and take a look underneath there .

This is powered by a 4 40 I think , you know , one could , some people complain about the Chrysler ride .

It's not to be honest , my favorite for a full size car just because it's so firm .

But you can't complain much about the 440 engine and the 727 transmission .

I mean , these are just great , great motors , although unfortunately Chrysler surrounded them with some lack less than stellar components .

In particular carburetors .

This has a stock holly 41 60 carburetor , that's what came on it and they're notorious leakers and have trouble with the diaphragms on them .

I actually just rebuilt this one in the last day and I also gave it a full tune up cap wire plugs , rotors and everything .

And this is not a fun tune up job for old car by old car standards .

And I can only imagine I had a number of mechanics tell me that , you know , people would come in back in the day with these cars and the mechanics would sear their hands on the manifolds because the plugs are under the manifolds .

It's a blind job from the top .

There's stuff in the way unless you remove the wheel in this , this uh splash shield here , in which case , it's easier to get to some of these .

But there's still just stuff generally in the way and particularly on the driver side where you've got power steering gear , dipstick and the exhaust .

So other vehicles much easier to do tune ups on .

Relative to these , I would say by modern standards , this isn't hard by the standards of the era .

Not fun .

I can do a tune up on a G M car .

A Ford in an hour of this era .

This one took me more than twice as long .

Nonetheless , great great engines and transmissions , very , very durable .

Another thing that Chrysler , you know , again , the basic core components are excellent .

The 440 is an excellent motor .

The 727 is excellent .

The carbo they use , whether it's the thermal quad or the holy 41 60 .

Yeah .

You know , I would say compared to a quadrajet , not great , maybe compares favorably to a Ford motor craft 4300 which also was not a great carburetor , but I would say these are rather troublesome and the other piece for the Mo Park fans .

So you are going to get upset at me for pointing this out , that lovely component , right ?

There , the ballast resistor , those love to go out and thankfully they're easy to replace .

Keep a spare one in your glove box .

It's just held on by the one fastener there and has a few clips going to it .

But they love to go out in wet weather .

And what happens then is the car it'll start up but it instantly stalls .

So if you have that symptom on your Chrysler that it starts right up and then stalls out instantly , that's your culprit .

So these did have electronic ignition .

This car you can see it's got the electronic ignition box there on the firewall .

So there's no points in condenser , which is great , but that balance resistor and sometimes the pickup coils and these distributors , you know , aren't great .

So I don't know that Chrysler got much credit for the system being more reliable than even a points base set up .

So that's a bit of the tough thing about these cars that it's a , it's arguably an advancement , the electronic ignition and , you know , you don't have any points to adjust , but some of the components particularly that the resistor aren't great .

And as I said , you know , core motor and everything is excellent on these .

But some of the components of Chrysler used , you know , just weren't , weren't the best these cars were sadly demo , Derbi a lot .

And one reason why look at the gap between the grill and the radiator and if you crawled underneath .

You'd also see , you can see here , there's pretty beefy reinforcements for crashes .

You can also see one of the rubber isolating mounting points there .

But they are tough cars .

If you had a Chrysler station wagon , it could pull £7000 .

£7000 of course , had to be equipped with the trailer tow package and the external transmission cooler and things like that .

But from the factory , you could get a station wagon that towed £7000 .

Now , it might be , you might elongate the wheel base after you towed something that heavy with it .

But to me , amazing that a unibody car could pull something like that in a wagon from four to G M .

The top that they could pull was about £5000 maybe slightly over that .

So amazingly beefy cars really pleasing to the eye to look at this came stock from the factory with this olive greenish paint and the painted black top .

It's not a vinyl roof which I think makes it look quite sharp .

I do love the center reverse lights and the tail lights down here .

It's kind of funky overall .

Just a cool old car and fiber optic turn signal indicators .

Let's take it for a drive .

All right , let's go for a ride .

One feature I forgot to mention here is the map light that you can turn on .

But here we go and for all the park fans , the noise that you love to hear .

Ready boy .

Is this thing ?

Run great .

I just put new plugs wires , distributor cap rotor , rebuilt the carb perfectly smooth .

See my hands not even trembling at all .

Putting it on the wheel .

All right , let's go .

I'll wait for this car to pass me first and I'll go gearshift .

By the way , mo are used for a long time .

My 83 grand Fury still has that first impression is you set off is this seat is very pogo sticky .

You kind of bounce up and down price .

Their seats were like this for a long time .

The friend's got a 62 Plymouth and it has the same feel .

I don't think the seat engineers talked to the suspension engineers because kind of pogo stick up and down whether this car my Imperial or something else , you can see the turn signal indicator there pretty stiff ride .

But again , these Chryslers were focused more on handling than ride .

That was just their philosophy .

So if you want a cushy ride , you get a Ford .

If you want a good handling and a relatively firm ride , get a Ryan , if you want something in between , get a G M , that's the best way I can describe it .

And I wouldn't call it noisy in here , but it definitely has more tire noise and wind noise than a Ford or GM of the era which given the price point that I described for the car probably didn't Bode , well , if the buyer took a test drive in one of these , you know , if I were taking a test drive in this versus a mercury marquee brome or olds 98 I would have walked away thinking that , you know , the old and the Ford Road better .

Um , probably in quieter inside and I probably would have bought them .

And that's my personal preference .

Again .

I think Mopar has a lot of great things on balance .

You know , the 440 the torque flight transmission just really can't be beat .

And if handling was your thing , then you buy this mean it has no problem getting up and going , you can hear the motor really wasn't revving even that much .

And it's a fun car .

You know , the other impression here is that Imperial was obviously a more expensive car , but this New Yorker was not a cheap vehicle and the Imperial just comes across as being so much more refined .

It's so much more quiet , it's less crude , less wind noise and you know , this New Yorker , I don't know that I would say it's more refined in terms of wind rush and road noise than Caprice .

I actually would say the caprice is probably a little bit more refined .

So I think that probably hurt Chrysler a little bit , but on the plus side , really good visibility , whether it's through the front or through the side , great headroom , great packaging relative to the era .

GM really just didn't have a lot of great packaging I would say , nor did Ford , especially in the rear seat .

This car has way more room and it's wider , it just feels so much wider even than the GMS and the Fords of the era .

So I think I give Chrysler Kudos for their packaging , which I think was better and I would say their engines and transmissions , as I mentioned were just excellent and the handling was far better than anything for GM .

The one downside to the handling is a little fun .

The one downside to the handling is that the rear leaf suspension , if you have to panic stop , they tended to have a lot of axel hop and it was tough to panic stop in a straight line with the rear leaf set up .

That these have you watch any Bud Lindeman car and track videos from the seventies of these Chryslers , he's panic stopping them .

You watch the rear end , just walk all over the place because of that .

So that I would say is one downside brake pedal feel isn't bad .

There's good initial bite .

I would say relatively firm , pedal , good balance of firmness and pedal feel versus assist .

I would say GM had a similarly good feel .

Ford didn't have quite the same brake bite if you will and a little bit over boosted and the steering and the brakes , all of these cars are over boosted relative to today .

But the steering in this Chrysler , actually , it's not a one finger car .

I mean , it is when you're driving like this , I can use one finger and steer .

But if I'm doing parallel parking , this is not a one finger car , it actually requires some steering input and it's got a little get up and go to so a lot of weight to move around in this car , but no lack of power when you're driving around town or on the freeway .

I actually , there was one time where I was driving this car and I was in a lane on a freeway entrance ramp that was ending and somebody in the lane next to me was driving a contemporary Ford pickup and he and I both floored at about the same time his lane was ending and he thought he could get ahead of me and he couldn't , he couldn't pass me .

In fact , once we hit , I think 99 or 100 miles an hour , his fuel cut off cut in and he just dropped way back because the motor basically wouldn't let him go .

The governor wouldn't let him go any faster .

I think he wasn't overly happy about that .

I just kept going .

I mean , this car will keep pulling and pulling .

I'd say top speed is probably 125 120 something in that zip code .

But even at 100 miles an hour , I had plenty of plenty of pedal travel left .

So one thing that Chrysler also did really nicely and it's hard to see because it's still daytime , but they have floodlights for their gauges and it illuminates really nicely at night .

So I have to do a night video of this car .

You can see though the cameras bobbing up and down more as I go over this frost teethed pavement again as a function of that torsion bar leaf Spring suspension , which is rather stiff for the period .

Combined with the Bouncy Seed Springs by Imperial is the same way , you know , you kind of pogo stick around a little bit .

But these sea body Chryslers are tough , tough cars .

They are unibody , they don't have the full body on frame , but they are extremely tough cars .

They did unfortunately , rust relatively quickly .

And I think that coupled with the slow sales of these cars just means that there's not many around .

Unfortunately , I've only seen since I bought this car about , oh nine years ago .

I think I've seen maybe one other or two other good condition sea bodies for sale .

Not , you know , you find ones that aren't in great shape , but this car has only got 33,000 miles on it .

I think it had about 29,000 when I bought it .

So I've driven it , enjoyed it and I tour around with selling it sometimes because I've got a 12,000 mile 71 New Yorker and the 12,000 mile imperial .

So it's kind of redundant , but I've done a lot of work to this car over the years .

I cut my teeth on learning about Chryslers on it .

So I'm a bit attached to it .

I put , as I just mentioned , I did a full tune up on it .

I put a water pump on it .

Um , new front end components and an alignment done and it runs just spectacularly Well , this 440 is very , very smooth and it's just a joy to end up driving around .

So I hope you enjoyed this video of the 72 New Yorker here .

I'll put the left blink on so you can see the fiber optic indicator a bit better .

And unlike the Imperial , this actually does have turn signal indicators in the dash .

Why the Imperial does not , it only has the fiber optics .

I don't know , but that's the way it is .

I hope you enjoyed this video .

Thanks for watching a few closing thoughts here .

I thought I'd share .

Chrysler always made a big deal in the sales training videos of how the buckle on their vehicles was different than Ford .

And that the Fords , basically the buckle .

If you were exiting , it could catch on a lady's dress here .

Clearly , the buckle is below the seat .

So that's not a risk .

But the problem is it rattles against the seat frame unless you buckle it , which most people didn't do back then .

So that was probably an annoyance .

And then the other thing that I would say that's interesting here is you can hear a little relay kick on as I move this here , you're a kick .

So if you even in the heat position , if you had moved the temperature slider past that relay point , the air conditioning compressor would engage to try to ensure that the windows didn't defog up .

So sorry , sorry , didn't fog up .

So you can hear the little relay click on right there .

So I thought that was another interesting different feature from other makes and models and here are all my old tune up components .

The car actually ran pretty well aside from the crud that was in the car braider , but these are the original wires that came , they were orange .

Some people ragged on me and said orange wires get rid of those .

These are original wires for Chrysler electronic ignition .

You can see they say Chrysler Corporation on them electronic or date coded March of 1971 but they were just getting too old and not clamping well anymore .

I mean , heck after 50 years , I think they're allowed to , to start letting go and these spark plugs are still working well , but probably 30 years old .

So , and the Holly 41 60 carburetor , I put a rebuilt one on it and then I will , I usually have a spare of each carburetor .

So I will take this one and rebuild it .

So it's ready for the next time .