I grew up in the Illinios rust belt. I bought my '58 300 in '65. It was
already a rust bucket. The only cars that weren't were the garaged ones and
especially cars that weren't driven much in winter. The salt on the roads
killed them! At that time my friend's whole headlight assembly fell out of his
'58 Chevy! None of the cars in the fifties were dipped and therefore had
absolutely no rust protection for the insides of rocker panels etc. The only
protection at all was in the thickness of the metal and wherever the paint spray
happened to hit. I moved from the area in early '66 and remember already seeing
rusty rocker panels on Mustangs. By comparison, my parent's '72 Chrysler took
10 years to begin showing rust and it was driven to work daily in the worst
weather. Chrysler products of that era were actually better than most and just a
few years later were much better than the others. Early '60's Darts had
galvanized rocker panels and they went through the multi-step dipping process.
They held up decades longer than the competition. Around here (Montana) in my
town there are at least a dozen '63-'66 Darts and Valiants still in use as daily
drivers. Guess how many Falcons, Chevy IIs, Corvairs, Mavericks etc. there
are--zip!!
JERRY J BROWARSKI wrote:
> I was a senior in high school when the '57s came out and from my
> understanding, it was that specific model year that had most of the problems
> due to the fact that Chrysler rushed the production for that year. My good
> friend's father worked for Chrysler and his '57 Plymouth began falling apart
> and rusting in about a year. I believe Chrysler had corrected some if not
> most of these problems by the time the '58s hit the market so they weren't
> as bad. Unfortunately, the reputation of the '57s carried forward for a few
> years after that and hurt the sales of Chrysler products for some time after
> that. Prior to that faux pas, Chrysler used to beat out Ford in sales on a
> regular basis. It was a major screw-up from which Chrysler never fully
> recovered.
>
> Jerry Browarski
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