The Original 392

There is nothing subtle about a bright-red 1957 Chrysler. That’s because 1957 was the model year when Chrysler Corporation leapfrogged contemporary design trends, stealing a march on General Motors’ “longer, lower, wider” progression and debuting something so fresh that Plymouth advertised it with the tagline “Suddenly it’s 1960!” The Forward Look, as these finned aggressors were dubbed, said that the old Mopar—sturdy, practical, but almost entirely without glamour—was gone forever.

The new cars got the public excited about Chrysler products like never before, and the most coveted of the bunch was the new 300C. The third iteration of Chrysler’s Letter Car married the Forward Look with the new tall-deck, 392-cu.in. FirePower hemi—the one that is still recalled today in both dragstrip lore and Stellantis advertising.

The Letter Car concept started with the 1955 model year, when Chrysler put a 300-hp version of its 331-cu.in. FirePower hemi into a New Yorker hardtop body with an Imperial grille. That car was called the C-300, but its 1956