1955 Chrysler C-300 HardTop Coupe

Today, we know of Chrysler as the keeper of the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, SRT, Mopar, and Fiat brands. It wasn't always so. Maxwell-Chalmers was ailing in the early 1920s and they recruited Walter Chrysler to rescue them as he had done at the Willys-Overland Company. Changes came swiftly; in 1923 production of the Chalmers stopped and a year later the first Chrysler was launched. In 1925 the Maxwell brand ended as well.

In 1928, Chrysler began segmenting its offerings by price and function. Plymouth was introduced at the low end of the market while DeSoto aimed for the medium-priced niche. Also, the Dodge brothers were bought out and Dodge was brought into the Chrysler fold.

Early Chryslers were designed to offer well-engineered cars at affordable prices and early innovations included the first practical mass-produced four-wheel hydraulic brakes. This sort of advanced engineering helped push the Chrysler brand to 2nd place in U.S. sales by 1936. The first Chrysler 300 rumbled onto the automotive scene in 1955, boasting 300 horsepower from a 331 CID dual-quad Hemi. It was arguably the first muscle car and soon became legendary on the NASCAR tracks of the day with a top speed of 128 MPH.

This car carried an MSRP of $4,109 and was originally sold by Knauz Chrysler Plymouth of Lake Forest, IL by the owner himself, Bill Knauz. Five decades later, in 2007, Mr. Knauz repurchased the vehicle he'd sold so many years before and began a thorough restoration.