1956 Chrysler 300B: One Horsepower per Cubic Inch, and a Team the Crowds Booed

Tim Flock started 1956 on the sand. At the Daytona Speed Weeks, Ate Up With Motor records, he drove one of Carl Kiekhaefer's 300Bs to a new flying-mile record at a two-way average of 139.549 mph and then won the Daytona Beach Grand National. The Chrysler 300 Club's figure for the same record is 139.373 mph; neither source shows its timing sheet, so both numbers stay attached to their sources. By the end of the year Flock was gone from the team, the team had won the championship anyway, and its owner was on his way out of NASCAR.^1,2

The car Flock drove was the second letter car, and the club says the 300B began the sequential lettering that every later 300 followed. It was a hardtop only, series C72-300, technically a sub-series of the New Yorker. Over-Drive says styling changes were essentially limited to the fins and taillamps, and the club notes Exner's new, taller fins as the way to tell it from the 1955 car. At 222.7 inches by the club's measure, or 221.0 by Over-Drive's, it was the longest letter car of the 1955-1965 run, as the club counts them.^3,4,2

The engine carried the year's headline. The Hemi was bored to 354 cubic inches on a 3.94-inch bore and 3.63-inch stroke, still with two Carter four-barrels, and Over-Drive lists it at 340 horsepower at 5,200 rpm and 385 lb-ft at 3,200 rpm on 9.0:1 compression. An optional version on 10.0:1 compression was rated at 355 horsepower and 405 lb-ft; Ate Up With Motor dates it to mid-summer. That second engine is the source of the 300B's best-known claim: the club calls it the first American car to make one horsepower per cubic inch, a year before Chevrolet's 283-horsepower 283. Both ratings are manufacturer-published, basis not stated.^4,1,2,3

The transmission list shows a company changing its mind during the year. The two-speed PowerFlite was standard, worked by push buttons mounted to the left of the dash. A three-speed manual could be special-ordered. Late in the run came the new A-488 TorqueFlite, which Ate Up With Motor credits with a 2.45 low and 1.45 second gear and considerably better low-speed pickup than the PowerFlite. The history puts a standard-engine PowerFlite 300B at around 9 seconds from 0 to 60 mph and says the manual cars were about a second quicker, a general statement rather than a dated road test.^4,1

It was not a car for a buyer who wanted choices. Over-Drive lists three colors only, Cloud White, Regimental Red and Raven Black, with leather upholstery standard, 8.00 x 15 tires, and a 3.36 axle standard with Sure-Grip available. Ate Up With Motor puts the base price at more than $4,300, up from the 1955 car's $4,055.25 FOB Detroit. Inside Chrysler Corporation it now had company: the history names the Dodge D-500 from December 1955, the Plymouth Fury from January 1956 and the DeSoto Adventurer from February 1956, each a division's own performance flagship.^4,1

The racing team was run like nothing NASCAR had seen. The Henry Ford describes Kiekhaefer's drivers and mechanics in matching uniforms, immaculately prepared cars carried in closed trucks rather than open trailers, and crews that were among the first to practice pit stops. The museum's catalog entry for its surviving team car adds dynamometer-tested engines and names Ray Fox as chief mechanic. Kiekhaefer, the founder of Mercury Outboard, had run white Chryslers in 1955 without Chrysler's money, by the club's account, and Tim Flock had won that year's championship with 18 victories.^5,6,2

The 1956 season did not stay Flock's. Ate Up With Motor says he won two more races for Kiekhaefer, quit the team in April and switched to Mercury. Buck Baker, who replaced him, won the Grand National championship, and Chrysler kept the manufacturers' title. The Henry Ford credits Baker and Speedy Thompson with 22 wins in 41 races, including 16 in a row. NASCAR's own count for Kiekhaefer's Chrysler-Dodge organization, 52 wins from 190 entries, covers 1955 and 1956 together and both makes, so it is not a 300B figure. Neither source assigns every 1956 win to a particular model.^1,5,7

One of those cars survives at The Henry Ford. The museum identifies it as a Kiekhaefer 300-B driven by Buck Baker and lists a 354-cubic-inch, 355-horsepower engine, a three-speed manual, 4,145 pounds and 220.5 inches overall. It is also honest about its limits: the team did not keep track of wins by particular cars, so the museum cannot say which races this one won. That warning applies to the whole season. Twenty-two wins belong to the team and its two lead drivers, not to any one chassis, and the museum car's specification describes that car, not every 300B sold.⁶

Success on the track came with a price in the grandstands. Ate Up With Motor records that Kiekhaefer's cars were booed by crowds after an October accident involving his drivers Herb Thomas and Speedy Thompson, and that at the end of the season he announced he was pulling out of NASCAR. The Henry Ford's catalog puts it more generally: the team's success bred fan resentment, and Kiekhaefer disbanded the operation in 1957. The museum's article draws the longer lesson that the professionalism he brought soon became the norm. The white Chryslers had won so often that winning itself had become the complaint.^1,6,5

In the showroom the numbers went the other way. The club, Over-Drive and Ate Up With Motor all count 1,102 300Bs, and the history says 42 of them were exported. The club counts 1,725 C-300s for 1955, so the 300B sold about 36 percent fewer cars, and Ate Up With Motor places that drop inside a hard year for the whole company, with Chrysler Corporation's total sales down more than 30 percent from 1955's record. No published split of the 1,102 by engine or transmission has been found, so how many buyers took the 355-horsepower engine or the late TorqueFlite is unknown.^2,4,1

The 300B therefore closes the first chapter of the letter cars with two records and a warning. It gave Chrysler a published rating of one horsepower per cubic inch and a flying-mile speed that the club says stood as a record, and it carried the team that won a second straight championship. It also showed how fast a racing reputation could turn on the crowd and how thin the market was for a $4,300 hardtop. The 1957 300C kept the flying mile and dropped the oval, and it arrived with a new chassis, a 392 and a convertible.^2,3,1