1955 Chrysler C-300 🇺🇸

All of the American automobile manufacturers did major redesigns of their products in 1949. Chrysler was no exception. But, where other companies took radical steps forward, Chrysler styling remained conservative, old fashioned and even outdated when compared to General Motors and Ford. Sales suffered.  In 1950 Chrysler appointed Tex Colbert President and he promptly hired designer Virgil Exner away from Studebaker. Exner would start with a clean sheet of paper and redesign all Chrysler products starting with the 1955 model year.

In 1951, Chrysler released their new overhead valve V8, a 331 cubic inch with hemispherical combustion chambers,  called the Hemi. The engine displacement was the same as the  hot performing Cadillac V8 released in 1949. The Hemi was very competitive in both sports car racing and NASCAR from its introduction and it proved to have a lot of flexibility to increase horsepower. 

On November 17, 1954 the all new Chrysler cars debuted. Now all the cars were lower, longer, wider and more modern. Dubbed the “100 million dollar look,” the new cars finally had the styling the public craved. Under the hood,  all cars got V8 engines and the all new Powerflite automatic transmission offered buyers the option of a modern transmission for the first time.

The public took notice of the changes and Chrysler sales took off. All divisions saw big increases in sales with Chrysler alone increasing by 45%.

Tex Colbert wanted a car to finally bury the “old man” image of Chrysler.  By combining the body shell of the New Yorker coupe with the grille of an Imperial and the simple moldings of a Windsor,  trimming it with leather and fitting the highest performance version of the Hemi V8, now producing 300 hp, the C-300 was born.

Traditional Chrysler buyers didn’t know what to make of this new car. Many who purchased the car soon traded them back to dealers because the car was noisy, harsh and stiff. But those were the exact traits that racers wanted and the car quickly became a darling of NASCAR and AAA racing.

At a base price of $4,109 the C-300 was nearly the most expensive offering from Chrysler in 1955 and when you take into account the high performance nature of the car it is no surprise that only 1,725 cars found buyers.