I'm sure that there have been some sort of "specials" built out of
almost anything and everything that had original potential or could
be given potential by a engine swap.
Carl Kiekhaefer, owner of the NASCAR 300 team, had a couple of '55
New Yorker station wagons with factory installed full dual quad
solid lifer 300 hemis in them. One Chrysler 300C was fitted with a
Latham supercharger and customized in California to look like a body
design from Ghia in Italy, but another couple of 300Cs were shipped
to Ghia directly from Chrysler without most of their bodywork and
custom bodied there. There were apparently about a half dozen '56
Windsor convertibles that the factory fitted with 300B motors and
300B interiors to test the market for a 300 ragtop before the 300C
convertible was introduced. One of my ex-neighbors special ordered
a '57 New Yorker wagon in Gauguin Red and Charcoal with a 300C motor
and he was an engineer at the assembly plant. There were a handful
of '53 New Yorker coupes that the factory built as Mexican Road Race
specials with any and all export and heavy duty parts that they
could muster at the plant and one of these showed up stored away in
Michigan about 5 years ago. There were one or two 300Cs that were
factory test bed cars for the prototypes of the '60 cross ram 413.
Factory photos exist and one of the cars was at Memory Lane sales in
Phoenix around 10 years ago.
I got half way through building a '57 DeSoto Firedome 2dr with a
392, power swivel buckets from a '59 and on an on but had to sell it
when moving.
So, its not just '57 Furys.
Wayne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Hash" <mjh@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2002 9:00 PM
Subject: Re: 57 Plymouth hemi??
Yet another false rumor. . .I'm sure someone over the years as
retrofitted a
'57 Fury or two with a Hemi, but it was NOT done at the factory.
Perhaps
even some dealers would swap out an engine for enough $$, but, like
the
INfamous Ricky Nelson black Fury convert, this just didn't happen at
the
factory. . .
Do any other of the Forward Look cars have these outrageous stories
of
"factory" one-offs, and mysterious "disappearing" weird cars
supposedly done
at the factory, or is it just the '57 Fury??? I never hear about
the
supposed Elvis purple '58 Adventurer convert from the factory, or
the
"factory" '55 C300 pink convert with 413 cross rams, it's always the
'57
Fury that these rumors seem to target. Maybe it's just me. . . .
Mark mjh
'57 Fury (a REAL one) in OR
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