Hemmingsclassiccar october 2019 I Hemmings.com
chrysler
class
I
cs
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its initial power rating, and things only
went up from there. But muscle cars,
traditionally, have been midsize cars
with fullsize powerplants—and there’s
nothing midsize about a Chrysler 300.
We see it more in the British
high-end saloon tradition: fullsize body
and chassis, big engine ticking away
effortlessly under the hood, with proper
back seats, cornering ability that belies
both its size and the tire technology
of its day, and all of the comfort and
convenience features you could want,
making it capable of gobbling up vast
tracts of tarmac without stopping for
anything bar fuel. Europe has a long
history of building machines like these:
recall the Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9 of the
late 1970s, or the 300 SEL 6.3 a decade
before it; consider the original Maserati
Quattroporte; think about the V-12-
powered Jaguar sedans of the ’70s.
Sedan bodies, big power, and long legs,
with the gumption to surprise rivals and
pretenders alike on the open road.
The 300 was born in the fiery
furnace of competition—on track, in
such far-flung locales as Indianapolis,
Mexico, and France, and in the show-
rooms of America. Its development not
only benefitted from Chrysler’s world-
wide racing efforts, but it went on to
make some of its own racing history
as well. It also led the charge to revive
interest in moribund Mopar styling,
which had seen all of Chrysler Corpora-
tion’s marques in a sales slide.
The first versions of Chrysler’s
vaunted Hemi—the company’s first
OHV V-8—launched in varying dis-
placements across its Dodge, De Soto,
and Chrysler divisions in 1951. Chrys-
ler’s effort was rated at 180 horsepower.
Drawing from aircraft technology, as
well as fuel-combustion experiments
that dated to the prewar era and before,
Chrysler engineers saw the advantage
of the efficiency (and power) of such
a system. While the early Hemi was
conservatively tuned for the streets, andoffered all of the power that a contempo-
rary luxury-car buyer could possibly want,
the performance car and hop-up crowd
had also taken notice: It was quickly be-
coming the engine of choice in the newly
emerging world of drag racing, and Briggs
Cunningham had successfully used Hemi
power in several of his Le Mans racers in
the early 1950s.
Yet that sporting image didn’t square
with the Chrysler-badged machines
that the world then associated with the
marque. Recall that into the 1950s,
pillow-soft comfort, in an effort to separate
you from the tarmac below, had come to
define the American luxury car. Cushy
seats, power options, sound deadening,
soft suspensions on tall tires to absorb
even more of the bumpy road rolling
beneath your tread—all of these were
expected and demanded of premium-
priced automobiles in those days. Bodies
wereproportioned so that you need notremove your hat while driving. They were
the polar opposite of all of those sporty
European cars, so small and bare that they
couldn’t help but demand you become
one with the road.
Chief Engineer Robert MacGregor
Rodger, just 37 years old then and one
of those who had developed the original
Hemi, saw the disconnect. He imagined
a blending of Chrysler style with enough
power to make the world stand up and
take notice. He had also figured that he
could squeeze a then-unheard-of 300 hp
out of a stock 331-cu.in. Chrysler Hemi
using one of Cunningham’s solid-lifter
cams, dual four-barrel carburetors, and
a streetable 8.5:1 compression ratio.
He pitched it to Chrysler management,
and they bit: Some parts-bin rummaging
grafted an Imperial nose and Windsor
rear-quarter panels onto a basic Newport
two-door hardtop body.
Chief designer Virgil Exner tweaked
a couple of details (i.e., switching out the
Imperial’s front bumper for a base Chrysler
piece), a heavy-duty suspension was
added to cope with the Hemi’s prodigious
output, some bucket seats and a console
to help communicate its sporting intent to
the driver, and the 300 was born. That first
300, called C-300, looked the business—
the first Hemi-powered Chrysler that
looked like it had the potential to deliver
on the Hemi’s promises.
At a starting price of $4,109 (nearly
double the cost of a 1955 Chevrolet V-8
two-door hardtop), it wasn’t cheap. But1955 3001957 300C