Fuselage Body Quality Problems from Day 1?

[330dTA]

I read in the 2005 Charles K. Hyde book "Riding the Roller Coaster" (p. 211/389) that the "all the 1969 full sized Chrysler products did poorly because of poor quality. A rushed and rocky launch of new models resulted in dozens of design defects that went unnoticed until they reached the customer." - Mr. Hyde is here referring to an April 1970 issue of Fortune magazine, which told the same story (pp.102-105 and pp. 146-152). - Supposedly, the quality problems were so bad, that Chrysler established an office of consumer affairs in mid-February 1971, with president Byron J. Nichols in charge. "Customers could pass on their complaints about Chrysler products to Nichols..." who, of course, was impossible to reach.

Now I'm curious: Would some of you, who were there at the time, or are in the know, have memories of what exactly were these "ill designed pieces"? I for one, know for sure of only two. They were present in my old man's car.

1) The (dark Chrysler brownish green) dash pad had a blemish on top of it, square in the middle, from the day one. It grew ever more pronounced with the ultra-violet rays of the sun. What is more, I have seen the same blemish on all cars, whose dash pad wasn't black. My old man reclaimed it to the importer when the car was new, but they didn't reply. - I've concluded that it had something to do with the way the dash pads were installed. Any period info on this?

2) My old man's '70 New Yorker leaked from new. Whenever it rained (and it rains a lot in Finland in the summer) the heater core seemed to store some of the rainwater in it. I would flush the front passengers' feet with perhaps a quarter of a pint of water every time you took a turn to left. Enough to get your shoes, and the carpet soaked wet. My old man reclaimed this to the importing company, who of course found nothing wrong with the car. Grinding his teeth, he put the car in a garage, and kept it there every time it rained. Drove his German, non-leaking Opel instead. Not driving in the rain - and therefore not driving very much at all - obviously helped in preserving the car in immaculate condition for 18 years.

I'm not trying to raise negative feelings here. Sorry if I sound like it. I'm only trying to find out the true history of these cars. And the possible solutions to the claimed design defects.

 

[commando1]

Oh, you are right. Quality hit its bottom right around there.

I recently went through my 67 Newport with a magnifying glasss because, my trunk pan was, of course, rusted. From where. From the right corner trunk curve, right at the base of the c-piller. Like the other 95% of them out there. I wanted to get to the bottom of this by pin pointing exactly where, and then of course, why, so it will never happen again.
Did the whole CI thing. Locked in trunk with wife hosing it down, etc.
Then I needed to do a post-mortem autopsy of the deceased area.
Through the gracious efforts by Chris/azblackhemi, who went beyond the call of duty, we arranged a donor transplant by he supplying a dry dessert donor (thank you, sir).
Upon arrival of the donor, a perfect patch could slip right in to an area that is Hell.
A success transplant was made and the autopsy began by a complete strip right down to bare bone and surprisingly it exposed the problem proving they screwed up and there was no way to fix it back to the way it was designed. The way it was designed was impossible to make because of a complex 3-axis crimped it was called for. Even today that spec couldn't be made.

It was doomed to leak and there was the greatest cover-up of all. Bigger than the ignition key thing. So I ask everyone here, Are we going to take this lying down? Hell no. We (FCBO) are going to file a class action lawsuit againt FCA.
Do you know how many premature deaths that caused resulting in millions for a Canadian scammer printing out rectangular pieces allegedly as a perfect fresh donor.

 

[70FuryWagon]

On the first trip in our family's brand new 1970 Custom Suburban from Minneapolis to our cabin in western Wisconsin we experienced a major design flaw. Our 9 passenger wagon had no AC, so we had all the windows down until we got to the mile long gravel road where my Dad had us all roll our windows up to prevent his new family hauler from getting dusty inside. We had not gone 50 feet down the gravel road when we all noticed dust coming into the car from all sorts of places that it should not have (the manual vents were already closed) and by the time we got to the cabin all 5 of us could taste the dust and the car was coated with more dust on the inside than the outside. My Dad was furious and brought the car back to the dealer the next Monday and was told that there was nothing that could be done, except for not to drive the wagon on gravel roads. Fast forward 45 years to last month when I got my 1970 6 passenger wagon out of storage on the same cabin property and I got to experience the exact same problem when I drove my wagon back to Minnesota. It was like deja vu all over again.

 

[dude69300]

I have the same colored dashpad that you described in my '69 and there is no blemish and have never had the dash dump water on anyone's feet. The interior is all original. This is the first time that I've heard of a problem like that.
My brother had a '76 volare that used to leak water on the passenger side, he kept a bucket on the floor to catch the rain water

 

[70NPORT]

None of my dad's mopars (Dodge, Chryslers, & Plymouths) leaked any water. I do remember however a fire starting under the hood of one of the Dodges however...70 Polara. My mom gathered us all up and got us out of the car. It didnt catch on fire but it did bulge the middle of the hood.

 

[saforwardlook]

I started working for Chrysler in 1969 in Highland Park, Michigan in the engineering center and I did not get the impression that the C bodies were that bad in quality, although there were significant wind noise issues in some models. The real decline in quality of the C bodies was with the formals starting in 1974, where Chrysler did everything they could to wring out every bit of cost out of every component to survive. The strategy of copying GM designs with cheaper prices was a loser since GM already had wrung all they could out of their models, but they had higher quality and performance standards than Chrysler. That strategy coupled with their miserable lean burn engines with attendant awful driveability led to Chrysler's bankruptcy circa 1980.

 

[330dTA]

So it seems that the leakage problem in my old man's NY was not a design defect after all, but a singular build quality issue. Whatever caused it, we never found out. So be it.

To me a design defect is something that would have been on every option, component, or group of components. Build quality issue would be a different thing. Some cars have it, others don't. - I'm in the impression that the general build quality back in the day was way down from modern standards. In every car there was. Period Jaguar, for example, was a real pain.

And I bet nobody at Chrysler Corporation ever even imagined that the mid to late 60's cars would be on the road 45 to 50 years from then. Surprisingly many are, though. Some of them are even used as daily drivers. I think it speaks a lot for the engineering quality of Mopar. Some tough cars they made.

I'm only pondering the meaning of that sentence in the Charles Hyde book I quoted. I have a copy of the April 1970 issue of Fortune magazine, and the quality problems were described there too. They woke up my curiosity. Those problems might have been small issues, of course. Perhaps the well known Autotemp I issue was one of them?

 

[barnfind]

Thanks Obama!

Oh, you are right. Quality hit its bottom right around there.

I recently went through my 67 Newport with a magnifying glasss because, my trunk pan was, of course, rusted. From where. From the right corner trunk curve, right at the base of the c-piller. Like the other 95% of them out there. I wanted to get to the bottom of this by pin pointing exactly where, and then of course, why, so it will never happen again.
Did the whole CI thing. Locked in trunk with wife hosing it down, etc.
Then I needed to do a post-mortem autopsy of the deceased area.
Through the gracious efforts by Chris/azblackhemi, who went beyond the call of duty, we arranged a donor transplant by he supplying a dry dessert donor (thank you, sir).
Upon arrival of the donor, a perfect patch could slip right in to an area that is Hell.
A success transplant was made and the autopsy began by a complete strip right down to bare bone and surprisingly it exposed the problem proving they screwed up and there was no way to fix it back to the way it was designed. The way it was designed was impossible to make because of a complex 3-axis crimped it was called for. Even today that spec couldn't be made.

It was doomed to leak and there was the greatest cover-up of all. Bigger than the ignition key thing. So I ask everyone here, Are we going to take this lying down? Hell no. We (FCBO) are going to file a class action lawsuit againt FCA.
Do you know how many premature deaths that caused resulting in millions for a Canadian scammer printing out rectangular pieces allegedly as a perfect fresh donor.

 

[Samplingman]

Thanks Obama!

Got that right! Damn 7 year-olds mucking up Chrysler in its hey day!!

:backontopic:

 

[commando1]

Over the years as I have crawled over every inch of the Chrysler Formals, I am stupified at how the Engineers ever expected Manufacturing to assemble these cars on an assembly line. A first year Technical School student couldnt have done worse.
Didn't Engineering and Manufacturing even talk to each other?

Look at the "Chrysler New Yorker" emblem on every NYB from 74-78 that is on the rear.
When mounted, the holes are punched wrong so the emblem is forced into a slight arc.
Who approved the tooling? No one!
Who took the inititive to fix t? No one.
Who cared? No one.
Everybody in Engineering was working 80 hrs. a week trying to meet the new fuel standards.

Emblem? We're trying to get Lean Burn to work and you're bothering me about an emblem?

 

[Fratzog]

I doubt Chrysler had a monopoly on quality issues back in the late 60s. Remember the flak about rusty Fords? My Vega was the same way. The first light steels went on cars in the early 70's with no or inferior coating and rust through happened within a couple years.

 

[commando1]

Vegas. Every person who had to sign off on each stage of the design process should have been arrested for grand theft. Accepting a paycheck under fraudulant competantcy.

 

[Mr C]

I doubt Chrysler had a monopoly on quality issues back in the late 60s. Remember the flak about rusty Fords? My Vega was the same way. The first light steels went on cars in the early 70's with no or inferior coating and rust through happened within a couple years.

Rusty Fords...I remember them well...my Dad drove 71/72 Galaxie company cars and I swear we could see them dissolving before us.

On the Fuselage front- We never had any early Fuseys, our families 71 T&C and 300 4 dr had no problems...but by then they probably worked out a lot of the kinks.

 

[Wildaugust]

I don't know if maybe I'm just lucky or what, but I can honestly say that I haven't noticed any serious design quality issues with my '71 Newport. It seems to be a well built car IMO. There is a slight left to right difference in the width of the gap between the trunk lid (deck lid) and the rear bumper, but I can certainly live with that. Other than that, I haven't found any issues.

To me, it seemed as if the quality of North American cars and pick-ups took a major dive after about 1973 or so. I remember seeing all of those '73 & up Chevy trucks with their doors rusted right off and the sides of their boxes missing because of rust. I also remember seeing so many late seventies cars with the paint peeling off their hoods. I also lived a few blocks away from a Ford dealer in the mid-seventies. For a couple of years, maybe '75 or '76, every time I walked by, there were literally dozens of engine blocks lying on the ground, rusting, behind their shop. Most of them were V8s. I hadn't seen this before, when I walked by a few years earlier and I didn't see them anymore, when walking by, a few years later either. I don't know what was going on with that, but I remember thinking at the time that they must be having to replace an awful lot of engines.

 

[73Coupe]

....

And I bet nobody at Chrysler Corporation ever even imagined that the mid to late 60's cars would be on the road 45 to 50 years from then. Surprisingly many are, though. Some of them are even used as daily drivers. I think it speaks a lot for the engineering quality of Mopar. Some tough cars they made....

I've put 9k miles on mine since October! Yeah it needed some work to get it up to snuff, but no extreme issues. I need a new gas tank, front end rebuild, and radiator recore, but the car is not in dire straits. Just replaced what appeared to be original fuel hoses a couple weeks ago...and they weren't really all that bad.

 

[goldfish65]

Since general comments seem to be welcome in this thread, it seemed to me around '70 is when Chrysler quality began to slip. My Dad's '70 Barracuda was slapped together. I'm not saying all Mopars were shoddy at that time, it's just that before that they were built so well, so the change was noticeable. Obviously the cars that are still around today have demonstrated they were good ones.

 

[1970FuryConv]

Rusty Fords...I remember them well...my Dad drove 71/72 Galaxie company cars and I swear we could see them dissolving before us.

On the Fuselage front- We never had any early Fuseys, our families 71 T&C and 300 4 dr had no problems...but by then they probably worked out a lot of the kinks.

My friend Ted had a 1971 Ford LTD with the 400 V8. The car took 10 years of beating in his family. Plenty of dents, but it never rusted and always had great power off the line. That was one great car. Same as a Galaxy, except for the taillights and a few emblems.

 

[ceebuddy]

If you read this owners report and survey found in the June 1969 issue of Popular Mechanics, it appears there must have been some quality issues, at least as viewed by owners of 1969 Chrysler New Yorkers.

Here is a piece of second-hand information by one David Bremer (posted 06 Mar 2002) I found years ago on the Mopar Mailing List Archive:

»Chrysler built all C-bodies at Jefferson. It was a very old plant to begin with. A friend of mine worked there assembling Imperials in '73-'74. He has told me all kinds of grim stories about drug dealing and drug use, prostitution (on a vacant floor they used for storage called "box city") and overall sloppy work and employee sabotage. He said the roof also leaked and water dripped onto the line when it rained. It sounds like an awful place to work. If you have a car from this era (I have two), chances are it was assembled by at least a few intoxicated employees. Interestingly, he also told me that management ran the Imperial line at half speed, with the intention of having the workers spend extra time "ensuring quality fit and finish." According to my friend, this was a big joke amongst the workers.
Sadly, this bit of Chrysler history has passed on.«

 

[commando1]

Sadly, this bit of Chrysler history has passed on.«

"Sadly" ????

 

[mrmopar66]

I think a lot of that had to do with it being an E body. E bodies in general seem to be cheaper made then the earlier B bodies were. At least the interior anyway.

Since general comments seem to be welcome in this thread, it seemed to me around '70 is when Chrysler quality began to slip. My Dad's '70 Barracuda was slapped together. I'm not saying all Mopars were shoddy at that time, it's just that before that they were built so well, so the change was noticeable. Obviously the cars that are still around today have demonstrated they were good ones.