which he introduced to me as a "resource for Chrysler stuff", with "Fargo truck info, all sorts of old Plymouth info, and the like".  Howver, officially, it is termed "A Layman's List of Practical Auto Resources" serving "Dodge, Chrysler, Plymouth, and Jeep owners and enthusiasts".  There is a most comprehensive compilation of Chrysler histories, notably (for me) the history of the M6 semi-automatic tranny and the Hemi engine (with the A57 "W" (_\|/_) tank engine, AND the FARGO (Plymouth) truck!.

Aha!  I just (31 Mar 2009) turned up an old Chrysler products catalog from Andy Bernbaum Auto Parts, checked the Net, and he's still going strong:

(1932 SB,Jr. photo from collection of and © 2007 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.)
[Image cropped and artificially lightened by SB,III]

My Chrysler adventures started with my riding endlessly in the rear of that succession of new Dodges, starting ca. 1937 or so, standing up behind him, holding on to the rug rail for dear life.  Do you remember car robes/rugs (before efficient heaters) and the rail across the back of the front seat on which the rug was folded?  Next, I was allowed to "fly" my Dinky Meccano or other toy airplanes out the window at speed and watch the tiny props whirl (I did the same for my kids and grandkids, but for them I tied a string around the fuselages)!  Came early 1941 and Dad graduated to a new Chrysler Royal to pull a trailer for a projected West Coast trip; Mom asked him where the goat was to be kept.  Goat?  Yes, for fresh milk for me!  So much for a trailer!  Pearl Harbor put the kibosh on that trip, anyway.  That '41 lasted through the war, minus front floorboards, which rotted out in the salt (spread over snow to minimize labor for plowing and gas consumption), and then lost its right front fender when Mom turned sharply left at speed on Southern State Parkway ca. 1944 and the fender kept going straight!  As noted on the roster of cars, there were no spare fenders available in 1944; a substitute was fabricated from a Dodge front section, Plymouth center, and DeSoto rear (skirt).  I, and then my sister, learned to drive on that Royal.  Until black market prices abated and new cars were readily available, Dad passed that '41 along to Mom and bought a lightly-used 1941 Saratoga for business use.  It was a glorious shade of blue, which turned a lovely purplish hue after a few years in the sun (we only had a single-car garage).  In the great NYC-Long Island blizzard of March or April of 1949, we drove to the village for a movie and came out into a fairyland with no cars, only huge humps of white along where the road should have been.  A buddy (with whom I am still close) came along with his gang, all toting snow shovels, and offered to dig us out.  Nah!  We cleared the windows with Mom's help, made enough room for those bank-vault doors, got in, warmed her up, and just mushed on out!  However, when we got home, the car balked at a slight rise between the sidewalk and the driveway and nothing Dad could do (and he was a driver's driver) could get that car in the driveway; ignominy of ignominies, the car had to be left at the opposite curb overnight and found the next morning under even deeper snow on a gloriously sunny day.

Then, Dad got a new 1948 Chrysler Windsor Club Coupé; that car got clobbered in the driver's door and a chip of paint later popped off a fatigue crack that developed in the left rear quarter belt area between the lower left corner of the rear windshield and the upper left corner of the trunk.  Well, it looked odd and didn't rust; it seemed to have anodizing under the paint, instead of rust-preventative.  I scraped a small sample from the metal at the crack and, guess what?  It tested out to be aluminum, not steel!  The car only weighed 3,200 pounds and I had to take it to a certified weigh scale to verify that for the Motor Vehicle Bureau, which wanted to tax it at the normal weight of some 3,700 pounds or so.  Chrysler denied ever making an aluminum-bodied 1948 Windsor, but we had one; perhaps it was a development shop body that was just thrown onto the production line rather than scrapped.

Next, he got a new 1949 Chrysler C-46 New Yorker 8 Sedan, a magnificent touring machine!  We drove up to Boston in the late Spring of 1949 or so and managed to get the front bumper wedged between opposing brick houses in a narrow alley hard by Paul Revere's house.  I had the pleasure of driving that car to Boston in the Spring of 1952 and wiggling it up to the top of Squantum Head, an outcropping of rock over Boston harbor.  Someone must have spotted it up there (on what was really a donkey trail) and assumed I was going to drive over the cliff into the harbor because suddenly there were police cars heading right for the Head and a chopper lifting off from the Naval base there.  Chicken to find out if it was me they were after, I managed somehow to turn that great beast around in its own 17' 6" length at the top of the rock, scramble madly back down to ground level, and drive serenely in the opposite direction on the causeway as the posse raced by towards the Head to "save" me.

My own first car was a well-used 1939 Chrysler C-23 Royal 6 Sedan; like an idiot (but a true Chrysler fanatic), I had turned down a mint 1938 Buick Fleetwood convertible coupé at $95 for the "newer" Royal at $85.  This was at Thanksgiving break of 1951 and I proposed to work on it over the Christmas/New Years break and drive it up to school (illegally) in January 1952.  When I got off the plane at LaGuardia for Christmas, my folks met me with an odd air of mystery or anticipation.  There, in the parking lot, was a shiny, new '39 Royal sedan with my plates on it!  They'd done me a "favor" while I was back at school!  So much for working on my own car that I could smash around in the backwoods!

That same 1939 Chrysler C-23 Royal 6 Sedan was the one that I had up at Champlain College in Plattsburg(h), New York; it went through quite a few adventures up there with me, which are narrated on the succeeding page under More Chrysler Apocrypha, along with far more about my early Chryslers.

The '39 got rather well-used{!} and ended up using a quart of oil every 100 miles; it didn't smoke in the least and didn't drip at all!  I guess it just burned oil very efficiently [and a 1946 Royal owner just (05 Jul 03) advised his does the same now].  It was so dependable about this that I carried a 5-gallon (19-l) can of Silvershell (the cheapest quality oil I could get) in the trunk and simply poured a quart in every 100 miles without even having to check the dipstick!

I am recreating this page as best I can but it was a tremendous amount of work, including the Chrysler bibliography, my all-time list of Chrysler cars (saved elsewhere in similar format), and who knows what else.  Jim VanSickle's beautiful '48 Highlander 8 sedan was featured:

Jim VanSickle's 1948 Chrysler Highlander 8

Jim VanSickle's 1948 Chrysler Highlander 8 Dash

Jim VanSickle's 1948 Chrysler Highlander 8 door panel

[All photos by and courtesy of J. VanSickle - all rights reserved]

Speaking of Highlanders, here's a grab shot of my own C-46 Highlander 8, poor beast, with all the yellow Rustoleum vainly trying to cover where the paint deteriorated when the car was left outdoors for two years when I thought it was in indoor storage:

['49 Highlander photos 17 Oct 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved]

These were taken on an overcast day (17 Oct 00) after rain had weighted down the car mitt and streaked the side.

Now, as to '48s, eat your heart out, Jim VanS.!  Here's Hans Mouthaan's 48 New Yorker in Holland (Mynheer Mouthaan claims it's a "limousine" - not if it doesn't have a partition window between the front and rear compartments):

(Photo by H. Mouthaan - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail image; click on picture for larger image.]

   
(Three photos by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail images; click on pictures for larger images.]

Can't really call the "hangar queen" a "Straight 8" - there's no engine!  It's not originally a New York State car - it would a have had four over-riders on the front bumper with a license plate holder in between the inner two; pre-WWII cars had no factory over-riders and the front plate went on a "T" frame which came up from the "dumb iron" (bumper bracket) [through a slot in the sheet-metal air pan (the horizontal filler panel between the bumper and the grille) on 1941-42 cars - before 1941, there was no air pan].   (04 Jan 07)

CHRYSLER CORPORATION CARS (in order purchased by each owner)			Updated: 07 Sep 99

Codes: N = New, U = Used, S = Straight, V = Vee, L = Slant, T = Transverse,
       3 = SB,Jr.'s cars driven by SB,III	  {unless noted * or otherwise, all
       Mileage in 1,000's (last known),		   disposed of, presumed scrapped}
                                                   * = mine, running.


S. Berliner, Sr.
   YEAR MAKE     CODE MODEL       CYL BODY        MI(k)    NOTES
N  1940	Chrysler      Windsor     S6  Limousine            Custom-built at factory.

S. Berliner, Jr.
   YEAR MAKE     CODE MODEL       CYL BODY        MI(k)    NOTES
N  1932 Nash                      ?   Conv.Coupé           Nash to AMC to Chrysler!
N  1937 Dodge                     ?   Sedan
N  1938 Dodge                     ?   Sedan
N  1939 Dodge                     ?   Sedan
N  1940 Dodge                     ?   Sedan
N3 1941 Chrysler C-36 Royal       S6  Sedan       150+     RF fender replaced '44 (1)
U3 1941 Chrysler      Saratoga    S8  Sedan       100+     All doors hinged at front.
N3 1948 Chrysler      Windsor     S6  Club Coupé           3200# ALUMINUM body (2)!
N3 1949 Chrysler C-46 New Yorker  S8  Sedan
N3 1950 Chrysler C-49 New Yorker  S8  Club Coupé           Blown M-6 transmission.
N3 1952 Chrysler      Imperial    V8  Sedan                First Hemi-V8, full power.
N3 1953 Chrysler      New Yorker  V8  Sedan       001-     Lemon, "Square Wheels" (3)
N3 1954 Chrysler      Imperial    V8  Sedan (4)   250+     Finest car ever, bar none!
N3 1955 Chrysler      New Yorker  V8  Club Coupé
N3 1956 Chrysler      New Yorker  V8  Conv.Coupé
N3 1957 Chrysler      New Yorker  V8  Club Coupé
N3 1959 Chrysler      300         V8  Club Coupé
N3 1963 Chrysler      Newport     V8  Club Coupé  050+     Blew engine at 50,100 mi.!
N3 1967 Chrysler      New Yorker  V8  Club Coupé  150+     Blew new engine! (5)

S. Berliner, III
   YEAR MAKE     CODE MODEL       CYL BODY        MI(k)    NOTES
U  1939 Chrysler C-23 Royal       S6  Sedan       075      Had X-frame of Convertible (9).
U  1941 Chrysler C-28W  Windsor    S6  Sedan                Fluid Drive w/ 3-speed manual.
U  1949 Chrysler C-46 New Yorker  S8  Sedan       050+     "The Tank".
U  1950 Chrysler C-49 New Yorker  S8  Club Coupé           Honeymoon car.
U  1931 Chrysler CG   Imperial 8  S8  ClCpldSedan 065+     Blown #1 cyl.,s/n {tbs} (6).
U  1953 De Soto  S-15             S6  Sedan                Temporary while V-200 built.
N  1963 Plymouth TV-1 Valiant 200 L6  Conv.Coupé  085+     2nd finest car (Newark, Del.).
U* 1949	Chrysler C-46 Highlander  S8  Club Coupé  068+     NY'er "Tank II", going strong.
U  1964 Hillman       Husky       S4  Sta. Wagon  075+     (60% Chrysler) "Herman".
N  1970 Plymouth      Duster (7)  L6  Coupé (8)   148+     Sold, scrapped in run. cond.
U  1976 Plymouth      Arrow       S4  Fastback    068+     Ran fine, body rotted away.
N  1977 Dodge    NL29 Aspen       L6  Coupé (8)   160+     4-speed.  Sold, weak, running.
N  1985 Plymouth LM24 Tourismo(7) T4  Fastback(8) 281.512  5-speed with sunroof (Belvidere)!
U  1987 Plymouth LM24 Tour/Duster T4  Fastback(8) 090+     Died, scrapped!  Automatic.
N* 1999 Dodge    42C  Neon        T4  Coupé (8)   @        5-speed with sunroof (Belvidere) (10).

(1)  Ran all through WWII, floor pan rotted out.  Right front fender went straight on sharp left curve
       in 1944; no spares available; fabricated from Dodge front, Plymouth center, and DeSoto rear (skirt).

(2)  Chrysler denied making such a car, but body had to be heliarc-welded after accident; car was
       weighed on scale to verify 3200# registered vs. 3700# specification weight.

(3)  "Square wheel" lemon! - so awful a car that Chrysler allowed full value against upgrade to new
       '54 Imperial.

(4)  Ran over 150K with only RF window lift replaced; sold and ran 100K more, then sold again, and
       still running well when last heard of in '70's.

(5)  '63 engine blew on NJ Turnpike on trip to Colorado, '67(?) bought off Camden, NJ, showroom floor,
       engine block split in half in Lincoln, Nebraska, no new engines available, short block flown in
       from St. Louis, oil filter housing fell off half way to Denver.  Inherited by Mrs. SB,Jr., sold
       to SB, III's sister.  Ran fine until scrapped.

(6)  Picked up new at factory by John F. Nonenbacher, Jr., for JFN, Sr.; both were managers of José
       Greco.  Sold, with spare engine (from s/n {tbs} Le Baron convertible), currently in storage
       with blown #2 piston.

(7)  Clutches went at only 20,000 miles, replacements lasted lives of cars.  '85 CV joints went out
       at 228,000 miles; choke falling off - couldn't be fastened without replacing carburetor!

(8)  Last 4 nicknamed "Dustpan", "Ashpan", "Trashpan", & "Dustpan II", respectively, by dealer.
       '85 had full sliding sunroof, driven to Newfoundland & Labrador; sold running;
       all 280,512 miles on original engine and transmission and nearly all on
       2nd of 3 clutches (~230,000)!  Can you imagine how many shifts/clutchings that represents?

(9)  Odd, the '39 Royal is described as a CW in one source and a C-23 in another.

(10) The Neon had no brand ID inside (only the word "Neon" on the far right of the dash) so I got
       a spare Dodge hood badge and bonded it to the center of the dashboard - looks good!

    Naturally, the Neon HAD to be named the "Nashpan" (how Chrysler/AMC-appropriate).