(first posted 4/5/2018) Last week, Jason ran a great write-up (replete with Linda Vaughn and George Hurst) on the ultra-rare Chrysler 300H (a genuine curbside classic that Paul managed to photograph behind a small restoration shop). To add to the mix, here is a period review from the July 1970 issue of Road Test Magazine, featuring a full road test of this most unusual Chrysler. Read on to see what they made of the white and gold beast back in the day.
Overall, Road Test was favorably impressed with the 300H, other than their oft-repeated concerns about the trunk release mechanisms. The enormous car was a strong performer, and it did offer luxury features to elevate it above more ordinary Chrysler 2-doors. But that was the problem: the 300H still came across as full-sized Chrysler, albeit one with an unusual paint job and rather out-of-place spoilers and hood scoops.
Buyers who wanted spoilers, scoops and wild paint with their muscle also wanted a more manageably-sized package, while buyers seeking large luxury “sport” offerings were finding plenty to like in the Personal Luxury segment. With the 300H as tested selling for around $6,000 ($39,522 adjusted), the competition was fierce from cars like the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Toronado and Pontiac Grand Prix–all of which offered very unique and desirable styling inside and out, while also having the potential to be optioned up for reasonably strong levels of performance and handling.
The blend of muscle car with super-sized traditional luxury car had not been working out too well sales wise for a number of years before the 300H was introduced. So it was no surprise that Road Test‘s projections for success (and Chrysler’s) were missed by a mile. Chalk the 300H up as another “flop” in Chrysler’s roster as the company proved once again to be tone deaf regarding market trends, no matter how interesting and unique the underlying concept of a Hurst Chrysler may have seemed.
This is an interesting car, mainly from a marketing perspective. Who, exactly, was the target demographic for such a vehicle? The previous article mentioned a mis-communication between Chrysler and Hurst as each thought the other was going to promote the 300H and, as such, neither did, so very few people even knew about it, virtually insuring low sales. It was like the decision was made to build a special, high-performance Chrysler, but no decision was made to actually advertise it.
Still, you have to wonder where they would have placed ads for this and the other large, full-size performance cars of the day: the Plymouth Sport Fury GT and Mercury Marauder X-100. The only real mention of the Fury was as part of the group of cars known as the Plymouth Rapid Transit System, which also included the Road Runner, GTX, ‘Cuda, and Duster 340. Even then, the Fury seemed out-of-place with those other, hard-edged musclecars.
It is also noteworthy that Road Test makes specific mention of the 300H’s full-throttle kick-down from third to second gear at speed (up to 84 mph). This is really the area where something like the 300H would shine. Indeed, the whole rationale behind musclecar performance was the necessity for a ‘killer’ kick-down in passing situations as much of the US still had two-lane highways. Once highways began expanding to four (or more) divided lanes, the actual need for that kind of immediate passing speed soon evaporated.
I’m wondering if it was more along the lines of the California Special. It’s not a direct analogy, size category or optionability wise, but what makes the 300H so different (and interesting) are the body mods that seem to go that one step further.
That kickdown need is still very satisfying when done correctly. Newer cars with more than 4 speeds tend to dawdle a bit before deciding on when to kickdown. My more mechanical 77 Chevy kicks down almost immediately if you are going the right speeds and off it goes as fast as the emissions laden SBC can spin up.
Are there any Car Life articles that either have mistakes or blatant BS? Trunks measured in SQUARE feet? Huh?!
Also, there was no plain 300 until 1962, not 1956 as claimed.
On another note, I’m wondering if this tested example wasn’t the pilot car, the first one
built. It’s only option appears to be the power seat. No AC plus it doesn’t even have a clock.
The options for this were ala carte just like the other Chrysler models. However, most were better equipped than this one.
The angle of one picture makes it look like this was the inspiration for the late 70s/80s El Camino. Remove the trunk lid and you are almost there. Both “cars” even had their tail lights in the rear bumper.
Probably THE most unusual vehicle (no pun intended) for advertising the Hurst brand.
Why didnt Chrysler went the whole way: 426 Hemi and 4-speed!
I am with the Chrysler 300 Club International and we were told by personal at Hurst and Chrysler the reason the 426, or the 440 6 BBL. motor was not used was they could not fit the Air conditioning compressor on to those two engines, hence the 440 TNT was the only option. Chrysler required that the car have AC and most all do, with only a very few of the 502 built do not have air or power windows. About 80 cars came with a console but none with a manual transmission, or a Hurst Shifter. Two Convertibles were produced with only one surviving to this day. Chrysler thought that Hurst was going to promote the car, while Hurst thought Chrysler was going to promote the car, as it turned out no one promoted them and the line was shut down in April of 1970. The cars were rather pricey and did not sell well so some were still on dealer lots new in 1972. The proto type is not this car but one owned by a fellow club member. Two different company’s supplied the trunk lid and the hood, to Hurst at the conversion factory after the cars were built at Jefferson road by Chrysler and shipped in lots of three. The hood was not built too badly, but the trunk deck company did not build the lid very well, so with no internal stiffeners, and over the course of time, the trunk decks on these have deformed, especially if kept closed in a hot environment. Check out our web site for more information on these cars, and the 55-65 300 Letter cars hand built by Chrysler.
Very Good Article. I Believe I Have The First 300 Hurst Produced. I Have Owned It, Since 1985. It Is A Public Relations Car. It Was Produced C- 09. Or Dec 9, I969. Mine And The Second Hurst Produced, Were Sold At The Same Dealership In Ohio. But Never Could Get Any More Information. Mine, And The Second Hurst Produced Have Consecutive Vin Nos. And Have Manual Windows. Mine Was Road Tested By Motor Trend. April 1970. Just Thought I Share Some Information On Mine.
A big Chrysler was always a good road car and a big Chrysler with HD suspension was even better. As much as I love these, I still don’t understand the lack of a standard console shifter. A more subdued color option might not have been a bad thing either. Chrysler buyers were not often the “HEY LOOK AT ME” guy. Black paint with the gold would have been cool.
I just now noticed how that band of gold paint under the side windows seems to fix the too-small-greenhouse problem that these Fusey coupes suffered from.
The original concept for the 300H was proposed to include bucket seats, a 440 TNT engine, the Hurst ratchet shifter, a ram air hood and a integrated trunk spoiler. However, Chrysler put the kybosh on the ratchet shifter prior to production. Apparently Chrysler had a high number of warranty claims for failures of the Torqueflight at this time. Chrysler felt that the addition of a Hurst ratchet shifter may exacerbate the transmission problems.
As a result the majority of the cars were produced with a bench seat an column shifter. According to the stats I have, less than 10% were produced with buckets and a console floor shifter,. Of course, this was not a Hurst shifter either.
Here is a factory bucket seat with floor shift interior:
Good information. This also makes the one Paul found and I wrote up in that 10% as it had a floor shifter. The one in your picture also appears to have the tilt steering column whereas the featured one did not.
This is an interesting theory, and I could see where using a non-stock shifter could bring some problems, even if they were made by Hurst. But Chrysler had been offering floor-shifted Torqueflites in large numbers since the 66 Charger, so I cannot imagine that it would have been any harder on the transmission to use the floor shifter out of the A and B body bins. They had used it on the C body 300 all the way through the 1965-68 generation too (though in much lower numbers). The bench seat and column shifter found in every Newport and Fury III seems to me to go in the opposite direction of where the 300 Hurst was supposed to go.
There is a difference between an OEM Chrysler floor shifter and the Hurst straight-line ratchet shifter that was planned to be installed. A ratchet shifter allows for very rapid shifts from gear to gear with it’s ratchet action. Unlike a standard floor shift, a ratchet shifter ensures that you won’t jump more than one gear at time. The point is, a ratchet shifter promotes easy manual shifting for performance oriented driving.
From what I have read in the past, Chrysler Execs were concerned that this ratchet shifter would cause further warranty problems with the Torqueflite. My speculation is that they probably believed that a ratchet floor shift would promote manual shifting of the transmission, which they feared might cause more transmission problems due to operator error/abuse. If you’d like, I can dig up the source for this information.
The ratchet shifter debate on the 300H would make for an interesting addition to a CC on factory automatic ratchet shifters as a whole. The whole thing seemed to have begun when Hurst branched out to automatics with their ‘Dual-Gate’ automatic ratchet shifter which (I think) first became available on mid-sixties Pontiac GTOs.
However, at some point, the ‘Dual-Gate’ seems to have changed (at least with Pontiac) to a factory-style shifter which had a ratchet capacity, but did not have the separate slot to the right for manual control. But at the same time, I can personally attest that the 1970 Cutlass performance cars (442, et al) still had the Dual-Gate while the GTO seems to have switched to the single lever style ratchet shifter.
Chrysler jumped on the bandwagon in 1970 with the Slap-Stick on the E-body. In that first year, it had a short, stubby metal lever with the same round, walnut-grain plastic knob that the longer, non-ratchet shifter automatics used. Then, for 1971, the Slap-Stick was expanded to the newly restyled B-body but the lever was changed to a presumably cheaper (and much more fragile) plastic t-handle lever. It was not unusual to see a cracked (or outright broken) Slap-Stick plastic t-handle on used Mopars so equipped.
The point is, Chrysler’s Slap-Stick simply wouldn’t have worked in the way the console was oriented in the much larger C-body. For some reason, Chrysler used a completely unique console assembly for the C-bodies as opposed to what was used in all the other cars. It appears that a decision was made to not make a version of the Slap-Stick that used the much longer shift lever of the standard automatic floor shifter. It does make sense when one considers the very low take rate of C-bodies with bucket seats and floor shifters.
How the Hurst Dual-Gate morphed into factory OEM ratchet shifters seems like it would make a great CC topic, particularly considering how one of the last hurrahs was the bizarre ‘Lightning Rod’ shifter that was used in 1983-84 Hurst/Olds where you actually got ‘three’ long shift levers, each with their own control button. I vividly recall the Car and Driver review where the editors thought the whole process silly, particularly as the transmission wouldn’t be under full manual control and shift by itself at a specific rpm, regardless whether the lever for that gear had been moved or not.
I don’t doubt you on this. My question is why, once the ratchet shifter was deemed unsuitable, Chrysler didn’t reach into the bin and use the standard floor shifter with a full or partial console. Good grief, buckets and a console were what everyone wanted in a sporty car in those years. The company and its many odd decisions has been good for quite a few head scratchers over the years.
The answer to that one is easy: how would a prospective buyer of a high-end Chrysler feel about having an identical console/shifter that could be found in a Duster? They could get away with that in Dodges and Plymouths, but not in a top-tier Chrysler.
I don’t know if they were actually the same, but those metal automatic floor consoles of compact and intermediate Mopars sure looked like it (up through 1970). Then came the stubby Slap-Stick with a plastic console (except for the compacts, which kept the same metal floor console from 1967 on). The only change on the compacts was the switch from a metal, push-button release mechanism to the wood-grain plastic knob in 1970.
It’s worth noting that those late sixties Chrysler consoles were big, metal, chrome affairs. The ones that the E-body, 1971-up B-body, and, presumably, all fuselage C-body cars got, was a smoother, plastic, color-keyed assembly. As usual, Chrysler was just following market trends as plastic consoles is what GM and Ford had already switched to a few years prior.
I am sorry if I misinterpreted or misread your post JP. Why they didn’t make a console and floor shift standard on this car, I am not sure. I can only speculate that the fullsize market was not as receptive to consoles and floor shifts. With the very low percentage of the 300Hs that ended up being equipped with them, it obviously wasn’t a popular option. I tend to agree with GN that this car’s main competitors would be the large personal cars, and many of them came equipped with bench seats and luxury was more important than performance.
Alternately, a solid dark green, blue or maroon with the tan interior.
GN, thanks for posting this as well as sending me this article a while back. It has a lot of invaluable information.
In researching these, what I have found amusing is the variety of options on a car that, according to one or two sources, was supposed to be built uniformly. Having found some without power windows, some with / without a tilt steering column (made obvious by the different steering wheel), and the location of the gear selector, these weren’t that uniform. One found for sale was claimed as having a factory vinyl roof.
What all of these cars shared, regardless of equipment, was a terrific and undeniable presence. Seeing one in the metal would be amazing.
Page 23 – “..the engine didn’t have much more than 1000 mph on it…” – guess the editors missed that miscue. 1000 miles is what was meant.
Great article, and I agree, the competition was fierce for these from the general, and led to a short lifespan for this car.
I had a stock 300 from this vintage but it interestingly had the 440 TNT. Shocked a lot of people with that big Green brute. Unfortunately, being a recently licensed teenager I shocked myself with too much power and totalled it a few weeks after purchase.
Almost 40 years on it still remains one of my very favorite cars.
Stubbornly insisting We, The mopar nuts, still want a fuselage Chrysler with 426 Hemi and four on the floor!
The standard electric trunk release on Chryslers is in the glove box because it can be locked to secure the trunk from nosy parking lot attendants (who presumably would be given the ignition key only, so couldn’t access trunk or glove box). When Hurst added the mechanical cable trunk release, they ignored that.
On my Taurus with a cable-operated trunk release, there is a key lock on it, so it can be secured.
I’m a sucker for these big brutes. I loved my 1970 Coupe de Ville. Most of us would say that this a just a big monster of a car. What a wasteful, space consuming, embarrassing thing to drive. Sure it’s big, but I’ve been daily driving a bigger vehicle for the last six months! My daily is 229.9 ins. long with a 144.5 in. wheel base that weighs in at 4,747 lbs.
My daily is over 5 inches longer overall, with an almost 6 inch longer wheelbase, and it outweighs the Chrysler by over 250 lbs!
What is this grotesque dinosaur of a vehicle that I pilot with complete abandon and disdain for good taste?
Why, my 2007 Ford F150 long bed, access cab, pick up truck. I don’t get any hateful looks or comments, in fact I believe that this truck and it’s siblings are still the top selling vehicle in the U.S.A. Of course as a modern vehicle it’s emissions are much lower and the fuel economy is 20 mpg. on the freeway. (4.2 V6 equipped)
So why the enormous difference in perception? I’m usually driving solo with an empty bed. I guess I’m going to hear from the truck and SUV haters now!
It’s just that pickup trucks are associated, rightly or wrongly, with a certain set of political beliefs, and so not really judged on their merits as vehicles. I say if you can afford it, drive it, whatever it is.
Looking at the engine photo I see no a/c compressor.