It most certainly was a departure from Virgil Exner’s styling traits, and after the disaster that was the 1962 model year, Chrysler Corporation couldn’t put enough distance between themselves and Exner’s surprisingly ugly downsized models. Taking Exner’s place was Elwood Engel, a former Ford designer who was credited with the 1958 Thunderbird and the 1961 Lincoln line. After moving to Chrysler after getting passed up for a promotion in 1961, Engel got to work on designs. His main contribution to Chrysler was the “slab-sided” look of the mid-1960s cars that did smack a little bit of the 1961 Lincoln Continental, but compared to a 1962 Dart, the copy job was welcomed.
Is the 1965 300L the last Chrysler 300? Of course not…there was the non-letter series that followed through 1971, the 1979 Cordoba-based model, the 300M of the late 1990s, and the current sedan. But it is the last letter-series car, where “300” was followed up by a letter that, effectively, noted which generation it came from. But even the 1965 models have controversy surrounding them, with some purists refusing to call it a letter car because instead of a top-tier 300, it was a dressed-up Windsor. Do we truly care? Nope. The 413 V8 will cure all ails, and as clean as this example is, anyone who ever thought this car was something less can bite it. This was the banker’s hot rod, and even for a big white brick, it has style, speed and luxury…the hallmarks of the Chrysler 300 series. Twenty bucks says that those repop’d redlines don’t last a city block.
eBay Link: 1965 Chrysler 300L
While I have never been a big fan of the L and much prefer the ’66 300 (no letter notwithstanding), this is a fine car. It is priced so fairly and has so many deviations from show car stock it could be a daily driver.
I’m not digging the red stripes or the blue lights, but the rest of the car is fine!
YOU’RE KILLING ME SMALLS.