RE: [Chrysler300] G Stick shift

["John Lyons" <John@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John C and all.

I pasted John C's note below...I had not received it originally so John H
sent me a copy....

I spoke with Dave Bowman (the owner of this car) a few weeks ago and then
spoke to Gil about the car.  The car is (and has been) a known car.  The vin
is 8413 130632.  While the original Chrysler micro film does not shed any
light on the true originality of this car, I can say one thing I have
learned is that Chrysler did a lot of strange things back then.

The transmissions in the trunk are thought to be the standard heavy duty
transmissions that Chrysler produced en masse in the early 1960's for light
duty trucks (of which they sold a lot of) as well as the letter series
cars...however, I did not get pictures of the stampings on them....I have
been told that Chrysler made light duty versions of the transmissions as
well that could not handle the torque of the letter cars' 375 horses....

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a note on the server indicating a car on the
West coast with a November build date (11/15) and a car on the East coast
with a similar build date.  This is the West coast car I referred to.  The
east coast car was purchased by a restorer. 

John H said it best (below): The only way to know for sure is when one
changes hands....the Barrett Jackson car was a nice driver condition car if
I recall....but it has also been two years.

Regarding the stick shift knob: I think there was also a tan (Ivory) colored
knob as well in '61....

Happy motoring.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of John J. Hertog
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 1:30 PM
To: cotejohnr@xxxxxxx; chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Chrysler300] G Stick shift

John and all, 

I spent the winter restoring my 3-speed stick '61 Newport and I am now quite
familiar with that setup. If someone wants to forward to me any pictures of
the floorpan and stickshift area, I can probably determine whether it's
original or not. 

In my opinion, the stickshift '61 Chryslers are rare because they make
little or no sense at all, from a performance and driveability standpoint.
The Torqueflite is just an eminently superior transmission. The 3-speed
manual trans is clunky and awkward.

Also in my opinion, and perhaps I am wrong there, I can't see a stickshift
300G being worth much more than an automatic - at least, not significantly
more. But we haven't seen a restored one change hands in recent years, so it
will be interesting to note what happends when one finally does!

Interesting stickshift information: the knob at the end of the shifter
(ridiculously small cheap plastic thing) is grey on my '61 Newport; and the
one that came off a '62 Newport stick was black. 

Also the pedals are different between those two years: 1962 uses identical
trapezoidal, V-shaped pedals whereas the '61 uses parallelogram-shaped
units, the clutch pedal being the reverse of the brake pedal !



John Hertog
Sag Harbor NY  

-----Original Message-----
From: John J. Hertog [mailto:crossram@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 2:03 PM
To: 'John Lyons'
Subject: FW: [Chrysler300] G Stick shift

-----Original Message-----
From: Chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:Chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of cotejohnr@xxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 7:39 AM
To: chrysler300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [Chrysler300] G Stick shift

Hi All,
  Manual Transmissions in a G are becoming as commonplace as the color
Cinnamon (isn't that right Pete Fitch!.) Old Cars Weekly (4/20/06 Pg28)
reports a 300 G Coupe in California owner by David Bowman has surfaced. 
It has the floorboard modification for the stick and two manual
transmissions sitting in the TRUNK.

  The article goes on to say , quote.... A Chrysler 300 owner who aided
researching Bowman's 300-G explained that, in the 1960s, sometimes crazy
things happened, and for very good reasons. It has been reported that a few
Chryslers 300-Gs were converted for fuel economy reasons in the early 1970s,
and still others might have been converted by younger drivers in the late
1960s with the idea that it could improve performance...... (end quote.)

  The caveat, the VIN tag and Data Plate are missing posing a challenge to
authenticate the car. ( Question for Gil C.---- Could the car be
authenticated as a stick car with the VIN/data plate? )

  There is a small fuzzy picture of the unique stick shift floorboard that
could help authenticate the car if closely inspected by a '61 stick shift
aficionado.

  Isn't it funny how when there is rarity in something, there seems to be
more than previously thought to exist. Kind of like the White
  '60 F 4-speed Stick Convertible. Could there be more than one? 
..................Naaahh.

 G-Whizz.....
 John Cote
 Guilford, CT.



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