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Styling Features |
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Officially offered for sale on February 10, 1955, the Chrysler C300 (supposedly the C stood for coupe) drew crowds to show rooms like nothing else before it. New 300 owners were besieged by looky-loos who ran up to them at traffic lights and accosted them in parking lots, and dealers lucky enough to have a 300 on the floor suddenly found it difficult to close on time. If they did, they had to leave the lights on so the public could continue to view Detroit's new pavement terrorizer unabated. It was quite a show, and everybody loved it except Ford, GM, and what was that other rolling junk pile manufacturer? Oh, American Motors, or Rambler, or whatever they called themselves. Talk about irrelevant.....when was the last time you saw some swarthy looking greasy dude stroll up to the window of a 300, cigarette hanging loosely from his lip, ducktail pomaded firmly into place, and say "Hey, man, wanna give my Rambler a shot?" |
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never happen. Ramblers aside, the 300 had a helping hand from its rich big
brother, the Imperial. When Bob Rodger proposed that Chrysler build a special
two-door hardtop to showcase the hemi race engine, there wasn't any
money in the budget for new sheet metal. Undaunted by the lack of funds
and determined to have the 300 stand out from the rest of the line, Rodger
bolted the top-of-the-line Imperial's nose onto a New Yorker two-door
hardtop body shell with Windsor
front turn signal lamps. Apparently the C300 didn't rate backup lamps for
some reason, or outside rear view mirrors as neither was available. All
other models had them. Chrysler's chief designer, Virgil Exner,
refined the C300's design by removing the Imperial's massive front bumper in favor of
a less ornate one which was similar to the Windsor bumper, but had the
little bumperettes moved outboard. This bumper was not used on any other
Chrysler, as you can see below. The rear bumper appears to have come right
off the Windsor. Imperial wheel covers were used, with a checkered flag
center design.
Oddly enough, air conditioning was
not available on the C300. Inside, the
C300 featured a genuine leather
interior in tan. Dashes are pretty much the same
across the board except for the 300's high speed speedometer. Here are some samples
below, and the various front bumpers.
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| 1955 Chrysler New Yorker dashboard |
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| 1955 Chrysler Imperial Dashboard |
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| 1955 Chrysler Imperial dashboard |
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| 1955 Chrysler C300 Dashboard |
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| 1955 New Yorker Bumper |
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| 1955 Windsor Bumper |
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| 1955 Imperial Bumper |
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| 1955 C300 Bumper |