Don Draper eat your heart out
Love them or hate them, ’60s American cars never cease to amaze. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, one rolls around that makes you freshly ask: “Did they really make that?”
The Imperial Crown Coupe was just such a vehicle. Born of a time where anything seemed possible, it was an 18½ft-long, two-door hardtop powered by a 7.2-litre V8.
And it didn’t end there: not content with selling a mammoth machine as a daily runner, Imperial created a package that gifted executives a rotating passenger seat and a fold-out table that converted it into a mobile office.
Yes, the Crown Coupe could become a rolling conference room. Bonkers, brilliant and every bit the barge, here’s why this ’60s two-door was an executive’s dream – and has us green with envy in these work-at-home times.
Spin me right round
Any potential buyer could take the Mobile Director package in 1967 or ’68 and live out their fantasy of dictating letters to a waiting secretary as they bowled along the interstate to their next meeting.
Or, better still, they could hold it right there: with the other chair turned through 180 degrees, the Imperial became a four-wheeled conference room not limited by location.
Corporate concept
The idea began as a concept at the 1966 New York Show based on the previous generation of Crown Coupe.
As well as the table, lamp and the swivelling seat, the Mobile Executive featured a television (only visible to rear passengers), a voice recorder, a radio phone and a telex machine – truly the corporate suite on wheels for the executive on the go.
Pawn to the next state
So thrilled was the public by the notion of a mobile office with all the latest gizmos that Chrysler offered the lot as an option for ’67 on the Crown Coupe.
The firm even produced a TV advert, playing on the possibilities of a romantic roadside dinner for two at the walnut table – or, as the brochure suggested, a game of chess under the radiant glow of a plug-in reading lamp.
Refined offering
Perhaps understandably, the features were scaled back for production to include just the twisting seat, the table and the tensor lamp that plugged into a cigarette lighter.
Even then, it cost more than $597 – or roughly 10% of the price of the car. So, they were very much special-order models: out of 17,614 Imperials sold in 1967, just 182 are thought to have been kitted out as Mobile Directors.
Tumbling valuations
Discouraged by the lack of interest, Chrysler had in effect given up on the Mobile Director for 1968 and was probably trying to get rid of all the parts and forget about it. The only mention made of the package was in the fine print on the back of the brochure.
Exactly how many were sold in ‘68 isn’t known because production records for that year have been destroyed. Some estimates are as high as 55, while others say it could be as few as 10.
Imp Force One
One niche group that did take a shine to the Mobile Director was the higher echelons of the US military, typically a wing commander in the Air Force.
Blue with a white vinyl top was a favoured combination – the white lid showing everyone where the orders were coming from – and, in theory, the setup was ideal: the top brass could be driven from base to base while working at the table and controlling planes in the air via radio at the same time.
Don Draper’s days
Desirable with or without the Mobile Director kit, the Crown Coupe is obscenely huge for a two-door coupe, its pillarless splendour speaking of the self-assured comfort of '60s America.
Here is a car of Martini-quaffing sophistication from Detroit’s last great golden age, when it still had the confidence to create unashamedly massive saloons with refined powertrains and imaginative, world-class luxury features.
Everyone’s got a light
There were no four-door Mobile Directors: the long coupe aperture was required for the rotating seat, which turned outboard slightly as it swung through 180 degrees.
As for the bulky walnut table, besides expanding to twice its size in conference mode, it could be positioned between the back seats or taken out and stored in the boot. There were also four cigarette lighters in the cabin, fit for the age of stylish chain-smoking.
Colossal coupe
Inside, its leather seats looked like something out of a Learjet. The doors had power locks and were so long that there were internal handles for front and rear passengers.
In fact, it was so big that it arguably deserved its own postcode. Drive one today and you’ll find passersby frequently do a double-take – first at the sheer spectacle of such a huge machine, then at the face grinning in the back pretending to be an important businessman.
High profile wagon
One of the rarest post-war American luxury cars, not to mention the wackiest, however you drove the ‘68 Mobile Director you were always going to be conspicuous – particularly when you assumed the ‘conference’ position at every opportunity.
After all, it was surely the only way to properly experience its full potential as a traffic-stopper. Provided you weren’t too busy playing chess, of course.