326 wedgehead
225 hp

This was my second car.  Power stearing and no power brakes.  I was spoiled with PS and PB on my '55 DeSoto so I didn't keep this one very long.  Boy, it was a long one, with lots of pick-up too.

Sharing in the modest sales recovery for 1959, Dodge built about 156,000 cars and returned from ninth to eighth place in the volume stakes. Contributing to this less-than-sterling performance was a rather heavy-handed facelift with droopy hooded headlamps, plus misshapen fins above suggestive thrusting taillamps.  Revised interior could be newly furnished with swivel front seats, semi-buckets that pivoted outwards on opening a door.  The vinerable flathead six was in its final year.  V-8s, now exclusively wedgeheads, comprised a new 326 (3.95 x 3.31) with 255 bhp for Coronets; a 305-bhp 361 for other models, and a big new 383 (4.25 x 3.38) with 320/345 bhp.  The last named was that year's D-500--and not cheap.  The 4 bbl 305 horsepower unit cost $304 extra: the Super version with twin 4-bbls ran $446.  Both were thirsty, but it was the age of the 30 cent gallon and the market still craved performance.

  1937 Plymouth P4
  1952 Plymouth Cambridge
  1955 DeSoto Fireflite
  1961 Chrysler Newport
  1964 Chrysler Newport

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