Re: [Chrysler300] Lefty's Earliest Owners List

[Kurt Greske <kurt_greske@xxxx>]

Joe wrote:

>am a K fan. Second thought/observation- How many have bought their Letter
>Car from a Chrysler Dealer used,

Hi Joe,

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this because the guy sold the car
before I met him in the early 1970s, but I did see pictures of the car with
his two daughters at his house and I became good friends with him.

Anyway, he says that when he lived in Milwaukee back in 1956, he
drove by the Chrysler dealer one day and there was a good condition '55 C300
on the lot. He stopped and talked to one of the salesmen who said that the
car was for sale and gave him a price on it. He bought it, wrote out a
check for the car, and got it off the lot right then and there. The next
day the manager of the dealership called him up and said, "we have to have
that car back, it wasn't supposed to be sold, we'll get you a brand new 300B
for the same price". Smelling a fish, he didn't bring the car back! It
turned out that it was one of Carl Kiekhaefer's racing team cars that had
either been in the dealership for display or had been retired and returned
to the dealer!! It was never intended to be sold again. I'll bet that that
salesman was selling shoes the next week! 
He said, among other things, that it had special big diameter front
shocks and a steel plate welded from side panel to side panel behind the
rear seat to stiffen the body. Later he worked for Chrysler's missile
division in Detroit and found that if a Chrysler employee owned a Chrysler
product and brought it into the factory, that Chrysler would do custom work
on the car for the price of the parts. He brought the car in and had
Chrysler put all of the performance improvements that they used on the 300B
on his C300. And then took it out to the test track and opened it up.

The later stories he told about that car and his experiences with it
were very interesting indeed.

Kurt

Kurt Greske ( kurt_greske@xxxx )