Auction: Monterey 2021

Auction date: August 14, 2021

Lot No.: S4

$220 | Sold

• Body: Display Engine
• 264 CI inline 6-cylinder engine
• Powerflite transmission
• Carter downdraft carburetor
• Purolator oil filter

For many fans of Chrysler’s engine designs, the slant-6 brings back fond recollections, sometimes about youthful indiscretions. However, before that arrived, Chrysler Corporation had relied on a series of well-engineered L-head inline 6-cylinders. The engine offered here was the largest of those ever created for passenger car use, and when it went away for 1955, the vaunted Hemi V-8 was its replacement. Measuring 264.5 CI, this final version was the result of one of the most important developments to leave Chrysler’s drawing tables.

Built at the Jefferson Avenue and Lynch Road plants in Detroit, these engines owe their genesis to a new inline 6-cylinder engine released in 1933 for the Dodge and Plymouth lines. Because of its four-bearing, shallow skirt design, the engine was extremely reliable, and Chrysler and DeSoto soon adapted it in larger displacements. Through the next 25-plus years, it retained the L-head configuration as opposed to an overhead valvetrain, and it was the mainstay of the manufacturer’s entire model line until the Hemi was released. The 265, as it’s commonly called, arrived in 1953 when Chrysler increased the stroke to 4.75 inches.

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Coupled to a bore dimension of 3.43 inches, these durable engines with a long crankshaft easily powered the big Chryslers. This engine has larger displacement than the similar-dimension design sold in the DeSoto line and was only offered for two years. Sold behind this display engine is a PowerFlite transmission, which was arriving on the scene just as the engine was slated to be retired for 1954. Again, from an engineering standpoint, this unit was ahead of its time, separating R with N before the D-L forward gears; most others had R at the bottom of their shift sequences. Many years later, when the U.S.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began regulating vehicle controls, the Chrysler pattern (with the Park setting added, becoming P-R-N-D-L) became mandatory for safety reasons originally stated by Chrysler.

https://www.mecum.com/lots/465366/1953-chrysler-264-ci-spitfire-display-engine/