Designers intent:
Looking a little more Pontiac than Chrysler, this front end study did establish the prominent center peak theme of a defined and separate grille extending into the hood surface. This was a 180 departure from the ‘69-‘73’s which were loop bumpers with flat inset grilles. Here also was firmed up a lower full bumper as much about tying the design together as it was about meeting the foreseen crash bumper standards to come.
Finally, the center peak meeting the bumper at a separate elevation from that of the grille was an idea that actually made it into production.
Twin “waterfall” grilles make an appearance that, when married to the earlier study, really start to come together in the later clay studies.
This clay study is 90 percent of the final established design. I think it was as much a preproduction engineering study as it was a design presentation model.
Variations from production are the cornering lights and bumper projection past the end of the front cap (needed to protect the body). Likewise, this bumper has the license plate bracket on the passenger side versus final production placement on the drivers side. Finally you see that the transitions from the fender peaks to the hood plane are much more abrupt/sharp than the smoother curve adopted by production. The same thing is happening at the sides of the grille as the body comes up almost too sharply to meet the upper hood grille plane.
I’m not completely sure, but I feel that the grille itself is also a bit larger than the final production version. The curvature changes I mentioned would have necessitated its reduction. A slightly smaller grill was needed in order to keep the final design intent (presented here) intact in translating it to actual production.
The final and last results of actual production; the 1978 Imperial/New Yorker.... now corrected to reflect the original design intent.
Nobody but us would ever be able to tell the difference.
Just before this shot, I started to play with adjusting the ends up just a hair to tighten the whole thing up and give her a bit of a Mona Lisa smile. You can see it on the passenger side. It still looks dead straight but the end is up slightly..... like 1/16”. Look closely.
Nature, architecture and industrial design abhor absolute geometric perfection.
The Greeks invented entasis for use in columns to make them appear straight by correcting our eyes’ tendency to reverse fisheye distort what we see. Likewise, they curved the entablature of the Parthenon and leaned its outer columns in slightly so they would look straight.
If anything is perfectly straight it actually looks odd.
Parallel lines that don’t come together slightly (in accordance with our expected understanding of perspective) appear to be askew.
I think she’s “happy” now and she reflects better how I feel when I see her as a designer.
