Most historical recounts are boring and tedious. There are dozens of them that tell the story of the Chrysler 300 evolutionary process, and I will refrain from repeating or quoting them. Some facts are necessary, but long, involved descriptions of what engineers did late at night while sweating over a blueprint of the latest connecting rod are not. Nobody wants to know how much coffee engineer A drank before he finally figured out what graphite coating on the 331 hemi’s lifters would do. I certainly don’t, and I don’t really care about the graphite coating. I just want to drive the car and know that the engine won’t blow apart at 135 mph. Yeah, I’ve done that.

In order to understand what this car was and what it did to the automotive market, one must be able to put things in perspective. If you are under the age of 45, this will be difficult to do because you didn’t "live the cars" like the rest of us who grew up in the 1950’s did. Movies won’t do it, car shows won’t do it, reading books won’t do it. You would only have a shot if you had never ridden in an automobile and we could make it 1955 all over again. If we could, the guy I would take you to see would be Bob Rodger.

Rodger was the Chrysler engineer who came up with the 300 idea. He had been working with the hemi for a while, and he had an interest in racing. He appeared to be just another button down Chrysler guy, but there was apparently something else lurking beneath that suit and tie. I think I know what it was…….he liked fast cars. Simple, huh? That’s all it takes. When I see pictures of him, which are rare, I see something in the eyes, something……..well, a bit crazy. Southern guys in the Army always had an expression for that look. They’d look at somebody, shake their head, and say "that boy ain’t right." Maybe Bob wasn’t right to normal people, but for those of us who share his compulsion, nobody was ever more right.

The concept was new. Lots of people say it wasn’t, and will cite such vague proof as "the Duesenbergs could go that fast," or "Offenhauser had the hemi long before the 300." Sure, and my Aunt Betty can fly. Let’s get real. Duesenbergs cost $30,000 in the 1920’s, when you could buy a nice Chevy for a grand. An Offy engine would cost you $8,000 and there wasn’t a thing you could do with it because it would never run on the street. Old concept my eye. Ask John DeLorean who and what he was thinking about when he stuck that Ferrari name on a little Pontiac Tempest in 1964 and shoved a 389 under the hood. It wasn’t Freddie Duesenberg, you can bet on that.

Cars weren’t very exciting in 1955. If you wanted to hit sixty in less than 10 seconds, you had to buy a Corvette and put up with a drafty two seater that rode like a truck, or push a Buick off a very tall building. Some of the T-Birds with the warmed up 292 ran okay, but again, we’re talking midgetmobile. If you were an upscale guy with a big income who wanted a fast, full size luxury car, you were out of luck. The Cadillac El Dorado sported a 270 hp motor, but the car weighed about 12 million pounds and couldn’t get out of its own way. And unless you wanted to wind up upside down in the Tasty-Freeze parking lot, you’d better not try any quick turns with one, either.

Let’s kill a couple more myths before we go any further. Detractors of what the 300 accomplished are quick to point their finger at the Chevrolet 265 V8 power pack as proof positive that all 1955 cars weren’t dogs. If that fails to elicit more than a yawn, they drag out the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 engine as the be-all and end-all to their argument. Sporting 180 hp, the little Chevy 265 was a very nice small block engine. The Rocket 88, a 324 cube truck motor, had 202 hp for 1955. What am I missing here? Okay, they ran well on the track and won some races, but they both suffered from the same problem……..when dumped into the engine bays of the monstrous GM street sedans, they lost all their punch.

A stripped down Chevy 210 sedan with 4.11 gears and a three speed stick could barely get 0-60 in under ten seconds and probably had a top end of maybe 90 mph. Just what your typical corporate executive wanted, right? "Gee honey, let me take you to the ball tonight in my gear whining, slam shifting taxicab with the cloth seats. And be careful not to get your high heel caught on the weld slag, there aren’t any carpets."

As for the Oldsmobile, forget about it. Please, I rode to school for two years in an Olds 2 door and it was, well, awful. It was a very comfortable, stodgy old sedan perfectly suited for somebody’s grandfather. It had the Rocket 88 engine, but the only resemblance it bore to any rocket I ever saw was the name. It had a 3 on the tree tranny that sounded like it came out of a bulldozer, and the only way you could get it to accelerate was to throw it out of an airplane. This was GM’s idea of performance. The engines had value to hot rodders, who transplanted them into smaller cars and tricked them up with hot cams and multiple carburetion, but the showroom factory GM sedans had virtually zero value as performance cars. The GM execs were asleep at the wheel, ignoring what was right in front of them. 

It took them over ten years to catch up.....not bad for GM, huh? Here's something to ponder; the 1962 Impala SS weighed 3512 lbs, some 500 lbs less than the 1955 C300. It was available with a 327 cubic inch engine, only 4 cubes less than the hemi. It was also rated at 300 BHP like the hemi. In the SS, the 327 might hit close to 120 on a windy day. The "legendary" overrated 409 truck motor might hit 130. What am I missing here? You figure it out.

Rodger knew better. He saw a market, and talked the Chrysler brass into filling it with something that, for its day, was akin to being strapped to a guided missile with leather seats. The 300 was a lethally fast street animal with wire wheels, and in the wrong hands it was literally a dangerous automobile. Again, think perspective; this was a day when virtually every car produced in Detroit had the performance of today’s better bicycles. The ¼ mile was the distance from Dad’s $9,000 Cape Cod to the corner drugstore, not the measure of a car’s performance. If you casually mentioned 0-60, you’d be greeted by blank stares. Bob Rodger didn’t like that, so he did something about it.

Basically what he did was this; he took the window rattling 300 hp hemi race engine and stuck it into a modified New Yorker coupe, in front of a modified two speed automatic transmission called the Powerflite. Not a spectacular gearbox, but at least you didn’t have to walk around like the Chevy guy with one hand in your pocket because you missed second gear and tore all the meat off your knuckles with the radio knobs. The coupe then got some trick suspension, big brakes, a nice rumbly exhaust, a beautiful tan leather interior, and Goodyear Blue Streak whitewall nylon racing tires. To set it apart physically, (there was no jingle for new sheet metal) Rodger grafted on the nose and grille from an Imperial and offered the beautiful Motor Rim Imperial wire wheels as an option. Sparse chrome trim and the unique 300 hood and trunk emblems completed the package.

The package cost over $4,000, as much as two Bel Air Chevrolets. It was worth every dime, and the high price kept the car out of the hands of minimum wage idiots who would like as not crash it through an office building at 130 mph just to see if it really would go that fast. The new C300 drew crowds everywhere it went, and for weeks Chrysler showrooms were mobbed day and night as people lined up to get a look at the Beautiful Brute. Production never reached 1800 units, probably because of the price, but the American auto market had been reborn. A monster had been unleashed on American streets….it drank gasoline, and it tore through the night on steel feet. Some remain today, pampered and waxed, sleeping peacefully in museums and under expensive car covers. They’re older now, but don’t get too close. They still have their teeth.