My wife and I have just returned from a nearly 2,000 mile trip in our 56 Southampton coupe..
After leaving home in South Carolina, we attended the Imperial/Packard meet held by Robert Soule in Chattanooga, TN. It was a very nice, relaxing time at Robert and Lequita’s home; they were wonderful hosts and there were roughly twenty Imperials of all vintages and two Packards. We had a very nice time and enjoyed the wonderfully restored downtown Chattanooga.
Our next stop was Lexington, KY on our way to the Chrysler 300 International meet near Cleveland, OH. We stayed two days in Lexington admiring the
beautiful horse farms and the local terrain. We toured the Keeneland race track where some of the movie, Seabiscuit was filmed.
Our next leg of the trip was to Cleveland, OH. We had a bit of trouble that turned out to be a bad condenser but we were out of commission for about four hours in a delightful town of 1,000, Danville, OH. No less than twenty people stopped to offer their assistance with our plight as we struggled to diagnose the problem. After we had resigned ourselves to spending the night in Danville and renting a car from the local used car dealer, a kind and gentle soul asked if he could take a look at the car. He got the car running by finding a short in the distributor and after we limped to his home, we found the defective condenser. He installed the only one he had (from a Ford Mustang) and we were on our way to Cleveland.
In Cleveland, we were pleased to find a very accepting Chrysler crowd of Imperial lovers. Nearly all of the 100 or so attendees were extremely interested in seeing the Southampton and they were very kind with their words of seeing this beauty returned to its former glory. The restoration is not quite finished but we were glad to have our efforts appreciated.
After four days of an active meet schedule, we had a relatively uneventful trip home, except that I ran out of gas near the West Virginia border. AAA came to the rescue and after a two hour delay, we were on our way. It rained most of the rest of the trip, but it was cool and pleasant while we rode in style. Throughout the ten day trip, we were repeatedly stopped by onlookers admiring the car and as we learned of their Mopar
memories.
The only odd thing that we noticed on our return trip was that our gas mileage dropped in half, to about 7 mpg. I was pretty sure the timing was off but didn’t expect such a decrease. When we arrived home, I washed the car and found that the entire passenger side of the car had a thick oily substance all over it. Also, we smelled gas fumes on the last half of the trip. Wonder if this could be a leaky fuel pump; the oil level was fine, so I assume it is fuel related.
The car ran like
a top and performed marvelously, except for the few problems mentioned above. Since the car had been off the road for nearly forty years, I guess we should feel fortunate to have such little inconvenience. Now that we have diagnosed those few issues, I believe we can make appropriate repairs and adjustments and we anticipate many more adventures. Thanks to the Webmonsters for adding pictures of our car to the 56 Imperials, although it is called a Newport, rather than the Southampton that it is.
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