1955 was a huge year for the auto industry in America and Chrysler needed it to be a good one. In typical Chrysler fashion, they didn’t completely slay it but they did make some hay while the sun was out, that is for sure. See, 1954 was abysmal. Sales were down drastically and the company was not trending in any sort of direction that could be considered positive. While dismayed at their performance, executives knew that 1955 would bring to bear a massive investment in new models and hopefully with it, improved fortunes. The claimed “$100,000,000” look ’55 Chryslers were cool. They were a complete departure from the earlier stuff and really represented a quantum leap forward for the company. For perspective, $100,000,000 in 1955 is the equivalent of over $900,000,000 in 2018 money. That’s massive and believable for developing brand new models from the ground up.
So how much did the company reap in ’55? How about $100,000,000. Seriously it was about a dead on push, which was loads better than ’54 but not where the execs wanted the bank book to be landing in what was an important year. Their response was to get after it design-wise again and being out the famed “Forward Look” cars of the late 1950s.
One of the big selling points for the 1955 Chryslers was the 250 available horsepower from the optional Hemi V8 engine. It was around ’55 that the public became incrementally more obsessed with horsepower and it was also about this time that Chrysler V8 production surpassed six cylinder production.
This video shows of the whole 1955 lineup and that’s from the famous letter cars right on down. The 1960s are considered the dawn of the muscle car era but the reality is that cars like this definitely kick started that program in the years leading up to that decade.
