It sort of pains me to write this bio, because the 300K is my favorite letter car. That aside, I have to call ‘em like I see ‘em. I know, I know, some 300D lover is going to be yelling "Hey! Use your GOOD eye!" Yeah, I know. I like the D too, but I never owned one. Close, but no cigar…….years ago Chic Kramer told me about a D convertible in Massachusetts that was going for the lofty price of $600. I passed because it needed body work. Oh well, who knew.

The first encounter I had with a K was when my aforementioned late friend Bob Mackey brought one home. He didn’t have much choice, because he had just crashed his ‘63 300 Sport into a tree. Of course the tree won, and Bob spent three weeks recuperating in a hospital where his favorite pastimes were hallucinating from the blood thinner (he had a shattered leg, and they were afraid of blood clots) and throwing dinners he didn’t like into the hall. He was that kind of guy, but he was a lot of fun.

3 Years before the sporty, Bob had tried to sucker his father into trading his ’62 Imperial Le Baron for a new 300J. Dad liked the leather bucket seats, and what the heck, it was a Chrysler, and he loved Chryslers. He didn’t want anything that got worse mileage than the Imperial, or that required any more maintenance. Miraculously, Bob managed to keep him from opening the hood. Bob knew what was under that hood, and he wanted what was under that hood. Dad drove the J the dealer had, and then asked Bob to drive it so he could check out the ride from a passenger’s perspective. Big mistake.

Bob got behind the wheel and tried as hard as he could not to……well, you know. But the ram injection god took over, and his mind began to reel. He panicked….what if he never got to drive another one? How could he live with himself if he didn’t……… find out? He had to know. I’ll just tweak it. Dad will never know what it can really do. Just a little bit. Bob began to sweat, and looked down nervously at the speedometer. My God….it goes to 150! Will it……could it…. His brain melted down, and he mashed the accelerator to the floor.

Bob’s father screamed something unintelligible, but it didn’t matter. Bob couldn’t hear him over the burning tires and the roar of the 413. The tach buried itself at the 6,000 mark, and Bob punched the second gear button. The J dug in and rocketed down the street like an insane guided missile, the twin AFB’s gulping the cool night air. "Stop!" Bob’s father yelled. "You’re going to kill us! Take this thing back right now! Are you crazy?" Yeah, he was. He didn’t get the J, either.

Four years later, Bob pulled up in front of my house with a Nassau blue 300K coupe. It was three years old and had about 20,000 miles on it. It had a matching blue vinyl interior, seven leaf springs, a tow hitch,  and air conditioning. It just sat there loping, like it wanted to eat something. Like maybe a Corvette. I pointed at the hood with a quizzical look. "Yeah," Bob said, and just grinned. That was all that needed to be said. Thing sounds like Norman Bates with valve covers, I thought. Perfect match.

The K had a hard life at the hands of my friend, but it held up well until the very end. Over the 5 or so years it lived with Bob, the K went through blizzards when nobody else would drive, three feet of water during a flood, dozens of exploded universal joints, (stall starts will do that) and more races than I care to remember. It killed everything we ran, including the state police and a street hemi or two. Bob always called it the Killer Thunderwagon. How a car that big could move that fast was beyond me, but I didn’t have any mechanical ability at the time and didn’t understand that it was what was inside an engine that counted. Suffice it to say, Bob’s 413 was not exactly stock.

140,000 miles and a burned valve later, Bob decided to trade up to a new Dodge Charger. He had gotten married and seemed to have lost the 300 urge. I thought I had fixed that several years later though, when I found him a black 300K convertible. It sat in his garage for several years, and finally he sold it. Jules Uldrich came out from Iowa and hauled it away. I asked Bob why he didn’t keep it…….he just shrugged and muttered something about having no time for it. The car is pictured below at its new home. 

In 1975, I bought a K from a Secret Service agent in Washington D.C., John Mendenhall.  It was his sister’s car, and he was selling it for her. It’s a white coupe with leather, air, and a single four barrel. Bob went with me to get it, and we drove it home. Yeah, I let him drive it. Yeah, I was sorry. Not really, though. It was good to see the old fire in him for a few hours.

Time flies, and life’s complications keep us from our appointed tasks. I drove the K for a while, then had the engine rebuilt. I drove it another 2,000 miles and parked it for restoration. It should be finished next year, now that I have the time and money for it.

AND that reminds me of another story. After the engine was rebuilt with 1.74 exhaust valves and a Purple Stripe 286 degree MoPar cam, I drove the car as previously mentioned. In 1985 my friend Bill, who builds engines and loves fast cars, went for a ride with me. Big mistake. In the spirit of my friend Bob Mackey, I lost it and let the K go. We were on a  2 mile long straight road, and I casually looked over at Bill as the speedo hit 120 (barely into third gear) and said "whaddaya think? Does it go?" He sort of turned very white and just pointed at the red light coming up. Well, not to be outdone, I just as casually took my foot off the gas, but nothing happened. It seemed that the K's carburetor return spring had fallen off and the 413 now had a mind of its own,  although a bit deranged.

 "Oh, I see," I said as I threw it into neutral and grabbed for the key. "This happens occasionally." With no vacuum, the brakes took their time to work, but we lived. Bill was very happy. I think.

Vacuum is a problem with wild cams. At an idle, the Purple Stripe cam had so much overlap that it only produced about 5 inches of mercury at an idle, which meant you had no brakes and would creep unless you revved it in neutral. I replaced the cam with the current 276 degree version which is still borderline, but man, when you stick your foot in it, who cares. The 413 is a screaming beast with a better cam, you just can't believe it. The K would pull 65 in 1st and a bit over 100 in 2nd, pinning you to the seat all the way. 

The K had the dubious distinction of being the first letter car to have a single carburetor as standard equipment. The hydraulic lifter 413 was now rated at 360 hp, with the 300J’s ram engine optional at 390 hp. The K also offered itself in every available Chrysler color, another  first, and offered a myriad of interiors in the final insult to 300 purists, vinyl. Leather was now optional in black or white. It offered a four speed manual transmission, why I’ll never know, but a few still exist today. One saving grace was a floor shifter for the automatic versus the pushbutton transmission for the Sport 300. The convertible was back, though, which helped. The ragtop K alone outsold the 300J.

300 lovers had been miffed when Chrysler introduced the Sport 300 in 1962, signifying the end in the minds of most the production of "real" 300’s. The K, however, horrified them………vinyl seats? A four barrel carburetor? Had Chrysler lost their mind? What were they trying to do? Sell cars, apparently, because more 300K’s rolled off the assembly line than any previous letter car, nine times more than the 300J alone. Speaking of the watered down yet still powerful engine, I think that one feature alone actually helped sell 300Ks. The rams had always been troublesome and expensive to maintain. Setting the 300J's solid lifters required removal of the entire induction system. You had better get it right, too, or you'd be doing it all over again. Some guys reinstalled a 4 barrel manifold so they could set the lifters while the engine was running. Some guys just left it on the engine, too. The standard K didn't have this problem, and the fact that less than 10 percent of buyers ordered ram injection proved the point.

Personally, I say maintenance cost be darned.....I think the K should have stuck with the J theory; rams, 15" tires, special wheel covers, and "leather only" seating. It wouldn’t have diluted the car so much. The only differences between a well optioned Sport 300 and a standard K are pinstriping, emblems, and the console shifter. Even the K engine was optional across the board, although they had the decency to rate it 340 hp as in 1963. I had a ’63 Sport 300 without air, and it had the 340 option. It screamed just like the K. I’ll give them that, they did run.

Mine should be one of the better ones around when I finish it. I have a lot of NOS stuff I bought years ago when you could still get it, and a lot of stuff came with the car as well. The leather is great, and the engine is……..well, it just sits there and lopes. Watch out Corvettes, it’s dinner time.