Henry Hopkins (in photo), with Richard Palmer, own a 300D in Air Force Blue, a Chrysler color but not a 300 color. This was a special order car.
This black 300F convertible shows off its black leather interior. Again black was not a standard interior color for 1960 but could be special ordered.
This also is a special order 300F. This convertible, with Terra Cotta paint, (standard color), has a non-standard, matching color, convertible top.
This 300H is showing its correct original interior but if you look at the photo edges you’ll see that it’s non-standard green paint, a color that was ordered.
These are just a few examples of the special 300 cars built by Chrysler and other makers. I have seen a 300E coupe with blue leather, a black 300F with white interior, a 300G with red interior, etc.
It appears that if Chrysler had the leather color available for its other cars such as New Yorker that those colors could be had in the 300 by special order. The same seems to be true for paint. There were numerous paint colors that people ordered as special 300s and most of them look good with the interiors chosen.
If the paint color was special ordered the paint code will usually be on the data plate as 999.
The 3 digits seem to refer to 3 areas of the car, bottom, center and top.
Thus if you had special order paint on a convertible it might be 997 as the convertible top might be the standard black or white making the last digit of the paint code represent that color.
For upholstery coding the special color upholstery is generally on the data plate as 888.
In the case of the 300F convertible pictured above with the unusual matching top, Chrysler just added another number to the codes for top color.
For 1960 300F the convertible tops were black, (code 331) & white, (code 332). So for the Terra Cotta top they coded it 335.
Other Special 300s include cars produced for racing, notably 300s that had standard transmissions without power steering or brakes. These were built in small quantity from 56 through 58 and are reasonably rare today. An example would be the 58s, perhaps no more than 3 made with only two survivors known today.
Then there are the1960 300Fs with Pont-A-Mousson 4 speed transmissions built mostly for the Flying Mile Speed runs at Daytona. With possibly as many as 10 built, today 4 are known survivors.
There are always a few cars that someone decides to build. In the case of the 300F 4-speed cars at least a couple of poorly done fakes exist.
As always when looking at a particularly rare 300, make sure you have some expert advice about the car before spending any money. The Chrysler300 Club Inc. has some very knowledgeable people who will help with information plus most of the very rare 300s are known cars.