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Jay Leno Breaks Out Another One Out Of His Collection, This Time A 1961 Chrysler 300G!


Jay Leno Breaks Out Another One Out Of His Collection, This Time A 1961 Chrysler 300G!

When did the muscle car appear? 1949? Mid-fifties? 1964? While the standard recipe of mid-size body with biggest motor possible was created by John Z. DeLorean and his Pontiac GTO, truth be told that what we refer to as the “muscle car era” was really the second coming. The first round was the mid to late 1950s and early, early 1960s. The thing is that for the most part, outside of a couple of outliers that include the fuel-injected Chevrolet Bel Air and Mopars like this 1961 Chrysler 300G, the power wasn’t meant to shock and awe like it was meant to in the Sixties. Instead, the cars were meant to be large, low, wide, powerful, and luxurious…the goal wasn’t to lay waste to the guy in the other lane, but instead to have the top-tier of everything, to be the standard for everyone else to follow. Chrysler was swinging for the fences in the Fifties, with the first-generation Hemis in cars like the Plymouth Fury, Dodge Coronet, and cars like what you see here, the “bankers’ hot rod”. Chrysler was using the technology that they had worked with during their military work during World War II and was combining that with the styling of Virgil Exner, whose 1957 designs sent designers at other manufacturers’ designers into damage control mode. But by 1958 the first generation Hemi was done, and next up for the cars was the “Golden Lion” 413ci V8, the earliest version of the big-block Chrysler, and for 1961, there was a new treat: Ram intake tubes that came in two flavors: short, which were more raucous and racy, and long, which were more common. It’s big, black and chrome, and sounds exactly like what you’d want a big V8 powered cruiser to sound like.


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One thought on “Jay Leno Breaks Out Another One Out Of His Collection, This Time A 1961 Chrysler 300G!

  1. Gary Smrtic

    Shouldn’t the headline read simply, “Jay Leno breaks out another one of his collection, this tme a 1961 Chrysler 300G!”?

    Oh, well. Our first year of racing, 1963, we ran my mom’s ’59 D-500, and got beat every single Sunday by a guy with one of these Chryslers. We’d have him covered untill the governor in the cast iron torqueflite made the car shift into high too soon. We won one trophy that year, on a Sunday where the Chrysler guy had to go to a wedding instead of racing….

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