Town & Country Rarity
If you wanted a station wagon in 1953, the odds were against your purchasing a Chrysler New Yorker. Oh, the New Yorker was an excellent choice, with its traditional outstanding Chrysler Corporation engineering, the universally respected FirePower Hemi V-8, and its restrained yet handsome styling. It’s just that the New Yorker Town & Country was very expensive — with a base price of $4,077 versus a $3,254 starting cost for a Buick Roadmaster, or just $2,591 for a Mercury Monterey. Small surprise, then, that only 1,399 examples were produced (alongside 1,242 Chrysler Windsor Town & Country wagons, which utilized the 119-horsepower, 265-cu.in. Spitfire straight-six engine).
Who, then, bought these cars? In the absence of period studies on Chrysler customers, it’s hard to say with any exactitude, but some random snapshots of Chrysler advertising provide clues. For example, as early as the mid-1930s, Chrysler was pushing the Plymouth as the only one of the “all three” low-priced cars rugged enough for farm and ranch work.
In fact, while the Mayflower hood ornament indicated a desire to be connected with the first families of New England, the Plymouth nameplate itself came only indirectly from the eponymous town in Massachusetts. Instead, according to widespread company lore, Walter
