Hurst Built 485 Chrysler 300H Hardtops in 1970 – Then Cut the Roof Off One More for Linda Vaughn, and the Internet Still Calls It a Fake

Chrysler and Hurst sold the 1970 300H as a hardtop only, but George Hurst had one convertible built for himself and for Linda Vaughn’s drag-strip appearances. Fifty-plus years later the numbers-matching 440 TNT drop-top survives in a private collection, and Rocket Restorations walks through every detail that proves it is real.

Every Mopar owner with a fender tag and a build sheet seems to have a “one of one” story, and most of them fall apart the moment you look at the option codes. This car is different. Chrysler and Hurst built the 1970 300H as a hardtop-only special, 485 of them by most counts, and not a single convertible was ever offered to the public. Yet here sits a Spinnaker White drop-top wearing Hurst gold, a numbers-matching 440 TNT, and a fender tag that starts with a letter instead of a number. It is the car George Hurst kept for himself, the car Linda Vaughn rode across America on, and the car the internet calls a fake every single time a photo of it surfaces. Rocket Restorations finally sat down with the owner to settle the argument for good.

Why a 37-Minute Walkaround Was the Only Way to Answer the Doubters

Tom from Rocket Restorations opens the video with a blunt admission: every time this convertible gets posted online, the comments fill up with people insisting it cannot be real. His response is a full-length, no-shortcuts guide, filmed with the car’s owner, Trev, that walks through the ownership chain, the period photographs, and every physical detail that separates this car from the 485 hardtops. The channel’s description calls it “the ultimate guide to the 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst,” and for once that is not an exaggeration.

The differences are exactly the kind of thing a forger would get wrong. The hardtops carried a saddle tan leather interior; the convertible is white inside. The hardtops had a clean lower body; this car wears a thick Satin Tan stripe along the rockers. The hood badges are missing because, according to the story that came with the car, George Hurst simply did not like the way they looked and had them left off. And the vehicle order number on the fender tag begins with a Q rather than a zero, the marker Chrysler used on cars pulled for public relations duty. Viewers who lived through the era have been quick to point out that the car looks exactly as they remember it from the drag strips, giant fiberglass shifter and all.

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The Heaviest Muscle Car Hurst Ever Put Its Name On

By 1970 George Hurst had turned his shifter company into a branding machine. Hurst had specialty-car deals running simultaneously with Oldsmobile, Pontiac, American Motors, Jeep, and Chrysler, and if a Detroit muscle car had a floor shifter, there was a good chance it said Hurst on the handle. The Chrysler 300H, introduced at the Chicago Auto Show in February 1970, was the biggest of them all. At 4,830 pounds and 225.1 inches long, it outweighed a Hurst/Olds by a wide margin and made a Hemi ‘Cuda look compact.

The formula followed the familiar Hurst script. Chrysler took a standard 300 two-door hardtop and added a fiberglass hood and deck lid with an integrated spoiler, the Spinnaker White and Satin Tan two-tone with gold pinstriping, and leather-covered power seats borrowed from the Imperial. Under the hood was the 440 TNT, Chrysler’s top full-size engine, rated at 375 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque and bolted to a TorqueFlite automatic. The 426 Hemi never made it into the C-body line because Chrysler had decided it could not be paired with air conditioning, so the TNT was the ceiling. The scoop on that fiberglass hood, incidentally, was not a ram-air intake at all. It fed the cabin ventilation system.

Car Life tested a 300H for its August 1970 issue and recorded 0 to 60 mph in 7.1 seconds and a quarter-mile of 15.30 seconds at 94 mph, only about half a second behind the Dodge Charger R/T with the same drivetrain the magazine had run earlier that year. The editors were less impressed by the price. The base sticker was $4,234, and a typically optioned car ran past $5,200, at a time when the plain 300 offered the same engine, brakes, and suspension for considerably less. Their headline asked why the 300H “doesn’t earn its letter,” a nod to the original 300 letter cars Chrysler had retired with the 300L in 1965.

The One Car Chrysler Did Not Build, and Hurst Did

Here is the detail that matters most to the authenticity argument. The 485 hardtops were assembled by Chrysler with the Hurst parts installed at the factory. The convertible was not. Chrysler sent a standard 300 convertible to Hurst as a public relations car, and Hurst did the conversion itself, which explains why so many small details deviate from the hardtop pattern. It was never a production model, never appeared in a brochure, and was never for sale. It existed to carry Linda Vaughn, Miss Golden Shifter, on a rear-deck platform beside a towering fiberglass Hurst T-handle at drag races and promotional events across the country.

George Hurst kept the car as his personal driver and, by Linda Vaughn’s own account, it was his favorite. He sold it in 1973, and it has passed through only a handful of hands since. The car was reportedly repainted three times during the Hurst years because it kept getting scratched at public appearances, and the Hurst logos on the rear fenders, which began life as vinyl magnets, were eventually painted on. Beyond that, it has been left alone. The interior is original and carries the dust and patina of decades in a collection, and the 440 under the hood is the numbers-matching engine it left Detroit with.

What Makes This Convertible Worth More Than a Hemi ‘Cuda Argument

The 1970 300H hardtop is already a rare car, and a handful of them still cause a stir when they appear at auction. But rarity by production count is one thing; a car with a documented role in the golden age of drag racing promotion is another. This convertible is a piece of Hurst corporate history as much as it is a Chrysler. It is the car in the period photographs, the one that made a generation of race fans remember Linda Vaughn before they remembered who won the final. That is why the “fake” accusations sting the people who know it, and why Rocket Restorations went to the trouble of putting the full story on camera.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.