1957 · Chrysler
300C
Banker's clothes, gangster's engine. The first muscle car, ten years early.
Chrysler called the C-300 of 1955 the most powerful car in America and they were not wrong. By 1957 the formula had a name (the letter cars), a body (Virgil Exner's Forward Look) and an engine that made the rest of Detroit go back to the drawing board: a 392-cubic-inch Hemi V8 with twin four-barrel carburetors, 375 horsepower, and a torque curve that would still be respectable in the 1970s.
The 300C was sold as a gentleman's express. Heavy, expensive, leather-lined, and quietly capable of running 130 mph on a closed highway. Chrysler raced them at Daytona, won the NASCAR championship with them, and then put the trophies in the showroom.
Every muscle car of the 1960s, from the GTO to the Charger, traces its argument back to this car. Take the biggest engine in the building, put it in the lightest body that can hold it, and sell it to grown-ups.
Why it matters
- First production car to make more than one horsepower per cubic inch from a wedge V8.
- Dominated NASCAR Grand National racing in 1955 and 1956, then again with the 300D in 1957.
- Established the formula (big engine, mid-size body, premium trim) that became the muscle car a decade later.
Photo · Squarespace Motors Journal
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1956 · Lincoln