Just tickled

Just a trivium that tickled my fancy.

In 1958 Chrysler made only two special racing-equipped 300Ds.

One was bought by famous racer Norm Thatcher, who souped it up even more and set several major speed records.

The other was bought by Herbert Magee, a California chiropractor with no known connection to racing. He picked it up at the factory in Detroit, drove straight down to Daytona, and tried to set a record. The engine failed for some mechanical reason, so he didn’t make it into the history books.

It’s a safe bet that Chrysler intended the second car for another real driver, but nobody else wanted it. In ’57 GM persuaded the manufacturers association to ban factory-sponsored racing, then worked around the self-made rules to sponsor its own racing. Chrysler and Ford didn’t own the “law”, so they were blindsided.

Sidenote: The 300 is a good example of a strange phenomenon I’ve noted before. Intuitively you’d think numbers are more susceptible to shrinkflation than names. But trademarks work the other way. A named model, or a named size, shrinkflates quickly. BelAir to Impala to Caprice, Large to Giant to Supersize. The top item on the ladder always slides down the stack as new names pop in on top of it. When treated as trademarks, numbers don’t shrinkflate. Chrysler is still making a 300N as its special high-power edition. The Olds 98 was the longest-lasting model of all.