Big Sedan Marks Last of the First Hemis.(Escape Roads)

Byline: LARRY EDSALL

In many ways 1958 was the beginning of the end of an automotive era, though it surely went out in style in the form of the Chrysler 300D.

Chrysler's 300 letter-series cars earned their badges as the first American production cars to provide at least 300 hp from a normally aspirated engine. That V8 was known as the Hemi because of the hemispherical shape of its combustion chambers.

But the production of the 1958 Chrysler 300D marked the end-at least for a while-of the true Hemi. In 1959 the car's successor, the 300E, was propelled by an even larger-displacement V8, but with wedge-shaped combustion chambers. (In 1964 Chrysler returned to hemispherical heads, though at first they were designated for competition use only by Dodge and Plymouth NASCAR teams.)

But at least that wedge-powered '59 300E was built with body-on-frame construction; that architectural style had disappeared from Chrysler's assembly lines by the time the company produced the unibodied 300F for the 1960 model year.

By 1960 the era was over: Detroit launched its first effort at building compact cars as Dodge introduced the Dart, Plymouth the Valiant, Ford the Falcon, and Chevrolet the Corvair.

There was nothing compact about the 1958 Chrysler 300D. It spanned more than 18 feet from its highly chromed front end to the tall tips of its long tailfins. Car companies were decades from bragging about short overhangs: That 220 inches of Detroit iron sat on a 126-inch wheel-base, leaving about four feet of sheetmetal hanging beyond either set of wheels.