Hemmings Classic Car – October 2019

Celebrating 49 Years

of Wiring HarnessService

909-798-1498

WWW.YNZYESTERDAYSPARTS.COM

WhenOnlytheBestWillDo

Availablein over 49,000

Makes & Models

Plus Electrical

WiringSupplies

(Wire, Terminals,

Switchesetc.)

soon the 300 won publicity you couldn’t
buy at any price: Mercury Outboard
founder Carl Kiekhaefer campaigned a
team of C-300s driven by Tim, Fonty, and
Bob Flock, and ran roughshod over the
NASCAR competition. Tim won 18 of 38
races outright, fi nished in the top fi ve no
less than 32 times, and walked away with
the drivers’ championship; brother Fonty
won another three races. This was from
the era when stock cars were, save for
some modest safety equipment, actually
stock. And the brothers did it without a
single dollar of support from Chrysler.
The 300 possesses a degree of fi rm-
ness that was otherwise absent from
American cars of the day. Hurry it through
the turns, and there is a blessed absence
of body roll—anyone expecting a car of
this size to roll over and ask for its belly
scratched while in sight of a curve will be
disappointed.
And that package continued to im-
prove: just a year after its debut, the near-
identical 300B packed 340 horsepower
from 354 cubic inches. (Starting in 1956,
Chrysler adopted letter suffi xes to delin-
eate model years of the 300, hence the
Letter Series name.) The 1957 300C was
part of Exner’s sensational new longer-
lower-wider “Suddenly it’s 1960” Forward
Look push, and the now-392-cu.in. Chrys-
ler Hemi (advertised as “America’s Most
Powerful Car”) was rated at a whopping
375 hp. A year later, engineers found an-
other 5 hp for the 300D; 1958 also saw an
optional electronic fuel injection system

(rated at 390 hp) developed with Bendix

both introduced and recalled.

This was also the last year for the

original Chrysler Hemi: the costs of

machining the correct combustion

chambers were considered wasteful by

1958 300D

SPECIAL SECTION: CHRYSLER CLASSICS 57