IML: Imperials economy, and safty, as well as rude driver inhibitor...

I drive my Imperial daily, and on the freeway too all the time. When traffic is real bad, and that is everyday around here, I always try to leave enough room to stop if required to do so suddenly, and quickly. As we are all aware, Imperials are not new cars, and with any and all discussion aside about brakes, and assuming your Imperial's brakes operate in tip top shape, our cars will not stop as fast, or in as short a distance as virtually ANY new car. Plus, we have lock up to consider in real panic stops, which luckily have been rare, but have happened.

My cars, in my experience with all my Imperials, '62 Crown 4dr & '60 vert with Lockheed Dual Center Plane Full Contact Brakes exclusive, of course, to Chrysler, and my '63 Custom 4dr & current '66 vert with the more modern, standardized, Bendex brakes, which by the way both have had the self-adjusting brake kits installed, which the '60 & '62 did not, and could not have, each has had the rear end cut loose, and go sideways, not fishtail, but, well, you know, just cut loose, which creates a hazard to cars in the lane next to you as well as in front. Anyway, I drive defensively, and like an adult (95% of the time), and have the insurance rates to prove it, but you know how it goes: your in traffic, and people will suddenly cut you off to gain one half a car length toward their end destination, usually little zippy, nimble cars, such as Honda, or Toyota, in example.

Well sometimes, at least here in Seattle, if a person is in bumper to bumper slow moving traffic, and is on either side, and puts on their signal to move into my lane I will be gracious enough to back off a bit, and let them do so, and get the polite "wave" of thanks. Sometimes though, you get some jerk, or jerkette, who feels as if by putting on their signal, that action instantly overrides your right to remain in your spot, and with very little room between me and the car just in front, like less then 5 feet in heavy traffic, they just start to merge right on in when I'm right there! As if I am just going to brake and passively let them rudely push their way in. I have been known to, on occasion, lay on the horn, push the gas, and assert my position. To date, none of these perpetrators has followed through in this little exercise in playing "Chicken", and hit me, or merged into me as it would be stated in the police report, but have retreated in haste, often with quite expressive hand gestures, some I recognize as a well know international symbol, and some flailing some communication I can't decipher. Perhaps they were speaking in ASL (American Sign Language). If the top is down, sometimes I can hear there verbal communications of gratitude in my letting them know I was in the spot they wanted to take over. I have heard these words of thanks in many different languages as Seattle is a very culturally diverse city, and has people from many different lands. They then know that the set of headlights they saw in their mirror was not a figment of their imagination, but was actually just a portion of a whole car of 20 feet, and not another Mazda, or Focus. If a real emergency, God forbid, were to occur, and I hit someone, you can bet I won't just hit it, I'll be going through it. I really hope that never happens. I have been rear ended before though, in my '63 and that was not pretty. No damage to my car, just hair line scratches on my bumper, but her car was totaled. Got my bumper re-chromed out of it though!