I present to you, a 63 Ghia Limo with a 62 driveline. In 63 park was introduced as well as getting rid of platform brakes. You can see the dash is 62. My guess is that it was the first sent over way in advance to figure out how to build the 63's. There were no 62 limo's and the 61's were just 60's that continued. Will be fun to dig in and see what we can find out. Anyone else see something like this before?
A 63 Ghia Limo that's really at 62?
- Thread starter My65cuda
- Start date
In those days, the cars were shipped to Europe for the conversion, which took time. Hence, the actual model year did not match what some paperwork might indicate. Not unusual, as I recall, back then. What does the data plate and VIN plate indicate?
Yes, but none of the other 63 limo's appear to have this going on. In the previous Ghia models, they would continue the car off the previous year so a 61 is really a 60. Difference is, they actually made a 60 Ghia. They didn't make a 62. Will be a fun hunt to figure it all out.
FredNY66
Member
The SO number shows 0406. It could be either 6th of April 1962 or 1963. But 6th of April 1963 is a Saturday. Would they schedule a car to be built on a Saturday? The car was born as a LeBaron (934) with special trim (999) and paint (999) which makes sense for a car sent to Ghia. Perhaps Chrysler then sent 1963 bits like front grill, rear bumper, taillights and Ghia "updated" the car, with a lot of '63 cars to be converted ? That wouldn't be difficult for a coachbuilder. Unless Chrysler did the update once the car was back to the US?
Last edited:
PackardDon
New Member
That's perfectly normal as many of the Ghias used previous model chassis and trim. Since there were no 1962 Ghias, it's likely that they wanted to get the show on the road as far as having the 1963s made so they shipped what they had. My own 1964 was one of twenty that was started but they took so long to build that only the first ten were 1964s with the second ten getting minor changes and called 1965s. The wheelcovers and grille were about the only outside differences although I understand that some or maybe all had 1965 dashes too. The trim and emblems remained 1964.
I wouldn't say it's perfectly normal, but I agree that 2 (assuming a container was sent) cars were likely sent over early. Possible the body work was done for the upcoming 63, but not the chassis updates. Who knows, will dig into it. I don't think comparing a 2nd year update is the same as the initial units being a totally different chassis.
My vote is the bfd is April 6, 1962 and this is a pilot car for Ghia for the '63 limousine program. Also agree that the '63 specific parts could have been sent over later to allow Ghia to do the basic cut and stretch that all limos received. Given that the bones of these cars were the same since 1957, it helps to explain why there's a '62 dash in a " '63" car, just as the '59 Royal Tour Car has a '57 i/p. Or it did the last time I saw it.
Similar threads
