From the time as a boy that I built a 1/24 scale 1963 Imperial model, I wanted a real one from the 61-63 series. By 2002, after I had grown up and earned a few bucks, I found one: a 1961 convertible, in a quonset hut in North Carolina. It came home along with a couple of parts cars and the work began.
It started at a well-known shop in Bradford, Ontario; but they couldn’t follow directions, so I pulled it, bare frame, stripped and disconnected body, and many boxes of parts. It went to another shop a bit closer here in upstate New York, where it was finished just days before we were committed to depart on the 2006 Great Race rally from Philadelphia, PA to San Rafael, CA. We were still tuning and adjusting the carburetor at gas stops on the way to the starting line! No excuse, though: we made it all the way, and the car was named: NO XQS!
The whole story is posted on our club website ( http://imperialclub.com/Yr/1961/index.htm ), so I won’t repeat it here, but I invite you to read it (I’m told it’s a good read – and a virtual American travelogue of images, too). What a ride! We handed out these cards to kids young and old at every stop. In a field of more than 100 unusual rally cars, NO XQS was always a crowd favorite.
The next adventure for NO XQS was by invitation to Eyes on Design 2007 at the Edsel For estate in Grosse Pointe, MI, as part of a special section called “Fins Gone Wild.” We were paired with another recent restored-to-spec car, a ’59 Caddy Eldorado. The high point of the event (literally!) was a measurement that proved once and for all that the Imperial has the highest fins ever, about 1/2-3/4 inch more than the Caddy, depending on which side of which car is checked.
NO XQS has run three more Great Race rallies: 2008 Chattanooga, TN to Bennington, VT; 2011 Detroit, MI to Dearborn, MI the long way (a lap of the Great Lakes); and 2012, as a last-minute fill-in for a broken ’32 Buick, going from Ogunquit, ME to Villages, FL. And not a single breakdown in all those near 12,000 rally miles!
No more rally duty for NO XQS these days. Point proven, it now enjoys drive-in movies and barbecue runs in Summer, along with the occasional field show. It’s the highlight of my collection of outstanding cars, one per decade!
Other Notes:
I think it was in 2005 that I was contacted by Yat Ming, famed makers of die-cast model cars. They came to my place and measured and photographed NO XQS and that became their model, even to the inclusion of two small, non-factory details ( gold color in the center of the Flitesweep, and a small color error underhood). Still, a nice tribute to No XQS.
I am often asked why the Imperial as opposed to the more popular Caddy. It’s an aesthetic matter to me. The Imperial is the work of one mature designer mind, where the Caddy is a pastiche of adolescent wishes. Or at least that’s as close as I can come to putting it in words. I do have one image that tries to explain this visually:
