Long winded story which seemed interesting and puzzling while it was going on.
I recently received a '96 Chrysler LHS shipped to me by auto transport. It came with a copied key on an Axxess blank, which has only the number
17 on it. That key functioned very smoothly in ignition, trunk, and doors. I wanted some spare keys. I took it to a local locksmith kiosk which made numerous efforts to copy the 'original' copy onto a Curtis Y155 blank, which also sez 'for Chrysler products'. These tries were made by the assistant, since the locksmith himself was out on a call.Those efforts produced a key which appeared to be identical to the Axxess blank key, but the resultant key would not function in the trunk, but did in the ignition and doors. The assistant made a number of attempts and recuts and brushing and used alternative blanks out of different boxes and was eventually successful in producing one key which worked the trunk as well, but gave up trying to produce a second key and wasting a number of blanks and repeated efforts.
The next day while at a local WalMart I tried to get another key made by the staff with their 'automated' machine, which was attempted on a WalMart Axxess blank. The automated WalMart machine works by putting the original into one slot and the blank into the other, and the machine does all of the 'work' for both edges of the double sided key. Unfortunately, that result was visibly unacceptable, apparently because of something wrong with part of the machine's cutting and its key wouldn't work anywhere. That is, one side of one edge was incompletely cut by the WalMart doublesided cutting tool. Attempts to turn the key over to 'finish' the cut didn't produce a satisfactory result either.
So then I went to a different locksmith store which had 3 locksmith employees present, presumably 2 or more of whom were 'real' or licensed locksmiths.
The first and I presume least experienced employee worked on the problem with the same kind of result as the first kiosk locksmith above. Those repeated efforts caused the most senior locksmith to become interested in the dilemma, but no trunk working key was being produced.
When the third locksmith got involved, he wanted to know what kind of car this was for, checked a book, and said the cut [or the key?] was like that for the 91-93 Chryslers, and that 'we' should be using an Ilco P1794 Y157 blank. That Ilco blank looks distinctly different from the above mentioned blanks, as it has a significantly narrower center groove, whereas the Axxess and Curtis blanks center grooves were quite wide.
Cutting the Ilco blank off the Axxess 'original' immediately produced a key which worked for all locks, including the trunk. The third locksmith was puzzled over how the working Axxess blank had been made to work by whoever had cut it. Of course or however, the first locksmith assistant in the kiosk had also been able to /eventually/ get one Curtis wide grooved blank to work as well.
I'm currently presuming the Ilco is the 'proper' blank and that the 'original' I was working with which worked just fine was *not* the proper blank. I found the whole experience to be rather frustrating for the locksmiths involved, considering how 'trivial' the job of copying a key would have been assumed to be. I guess that in this case someone in the past made a wrong decision on making a copy and had gotten away with it, until it came time for me to get a copy of that copy.