The Wifes Mild Custom ’65 Crown Imperial
Custom Car 1965 Crown Imperial Sedan
What does a hot rod shop owner’s wife drive? It’s gotta have some purple and lace right? Even some fur… Even though its a ladies ride, I think you dudes out there will dig as well.
This is Julie’s 1965 Crown Imperial custom. Julie is married to Scotty Birdsall, owner of Chuckles Garage. If you missed the story on his ride, click this link, ’62 Ford Falcon Straight Axle Gasser.
This 1965 Crown Imperial (alot of folks call it a Chrysler, but Crown was its own entity at the time) is definitely My Ride is Me. Let’s see why…
You can see it certainly fits in as a “Mild Custom” build. There’s not alot of mods other than a super crazy paint job, some suspension work, a groovy fur dash (it is a lady’s ride remember!) and some 600-15 wide whitewalls. When the goal is to personalize your classic machine, those are simple and effective touches.
Here’s the face of a not-often seen 60’s classic luxury sedan. I can’t say I’ve seen one of these before, but I like the mid 60’s era Detroit designs. To me this car is the perfect mix between late 50’s flair and 60’s edginess. Look at the front bumper. It has just a hint of the late 50’s big bumpers, but its definitely been toned down. Stick with rockin’ round headlights, but now they’re encased in a square housing. The rear fenders also have a miniature fin sticking out of the middle of it.
The Paint is a black base with candy burple and blue candy over the top with 3 sizes of flake. The lace is another shade of candy blue with gallons upon gallons of clear dumped over the car. The sides are black with tiny bits of blue flake thrown in for effect. The paint looks like you could actually swim in it.
Look at that lace work. I’ve seen about half a dozen lace paint jobs in person and every time I just stare at ’em. I wonder how the heck they do that. Work of art!
Scotty says about the power setup, “It’s powered by a 413 and an auto tranny getting about 7 mpg…Take that you hippie dippie Prius owners!”
That’s awesome Scotty and Julie. Love the Crown. This is what I love about this hobby called hot rodding. We each have our own likes and dislikes, we all have different budgets (or lack thereof), there’s so many different makes and models to choose from. Even if the mods are simple, if you’re able to achieve a finished car that is unique to you and your style and puts a smile on your face, then you have successfully hot rodded your car.
Hechtspeed
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Cool…now I never knew there was a Crown…I don’t know a lot of stuff! Really nice car!
Rad. My wife was really stoked to see this!
Woah! I know where this car lives. Its for sale and i wanna buy it! Its awesome
Nice car but…..
Chrysler never had a division called “Crown”. Imperial, on the other hand was a separate division of Chrysler from 1955 through 1975, just as Lincoln and Cadillac are separate divisions of Ford and GM respectively
Now just to make things more confusing, factory built Imperial limousines (1955-1965) were called “Crown Imperials”. But Crown was also a trim level for nonlimousine Imperials.
Thus, what you have there is an Imperial Crown.
Now, don’t take my word for it, consult the sales literature or data books. Good sources of information online include the Online Imperial Club and (believe it or not) the Wikipedia entry.
Cheers.