Frankenstein's Mopar - 1952 Chrysler Saratoga

In the annals of Mod Muscle, we have seen everything from the sublime to the outrageous, mild to wild, but what about a four-door sedan turned into a two-door coupe, with the appropriate hot-rod tricks thrown in for good measure?

Chuck Schoendorf, the owner of the 1952 Chrysler Saratoga pictured here, has been a fan of Hemi cars since the 1950s, when Chrysler marketed the first-gen powerplant as the FirePower V-8, stamping the name into the extremely wide rocker covers. While Chrysler generally reserved the Hemi for the higher-line and longer-wheelbase New Yorker and Imperial models, it created a bit of a performance car in the Saratoga. Built on the same chassis as the normally flathead-six-powered Windsor, the Saratoga featured the same 180-horsepower FirePower engine found in the heavier New Yorker.

That excellent power-to-weight ratio made the Saratoga a choice for racers in the U.S. and beyond. While Chrysler's exploits in the nascent NASCAR scene were writ large by the likes of Carl Kiekhaefer and his Mercury Marine racing team, at least one Chrysler Saratoga was entered in Italy's Mille Miglia, the famed thousand-mile road race. The Saratoga also saw action in Mexico. "A couple of years ago," Chuck tells us, "a book came out called Operation Mexico, and it was all about Chrysler two-door Club Coupes being raced in the Mexican road race, the Carrera Panamericana, back in the early Fifties, and it's always intrigued me."

Those two-door Saratogas were campaigned by none other than Kiekhaefer. Though he did not win, even with a driver lineup that included John Fitch and Tony Bettenhausen, the Carrera Panamericana put him firmly in the Chrysler camp, a relationship that paid off a few years later when his Mercury team won a couple of NASCAR Grand National championships with Tim Flock and Buck Baker behind the wheel.

Chuck's fascination, of course, led him to his own personal relationship with early Hemis. "About eight years ago," he says, "I bought a Chrysler Saratoga, but it's a four-door. It's a very good car and it's fully restored. The previous owner and I have driven it in Mille Miglias and it's a fabulous car, but it's a four-door. It's a family car. What I was really hoping to find some day was a two-door coupe built up in the Mexican road-race style."

When another four-door Saratoga came up for sale in New Jersey at a reasonable price, Chuck could feel it calling his name. "But I already had a four-door and you don't need two of them," Chuck says. "But what also happened, almost simultaneously," he continues, "a two-door Club Coupe came up for sale in Rhode Island. I saw that the body was largely intact. The fellow didn't want much money for it. It hadn't run in 30 or 40 years.

"So, I was looking at that and I was looking at this four-door that was available and it dawned on me that it just might be possible to take the best parts off the four-door and off the two-door, and merge the two to create a legitimate and authentic enough two-door Club Coupe. I showed the project to a vintage-car builder in Norwalk, Connecticut. They thought it was worth a shot, as I did. I gave them the job--to go as far as we could on a limited budget, to see if this was feasible. And it was totally feasible!"

It turns out that the two-door Club Coupe and the four-door sedan both feature the same wheelbase, and the same dimensions from the firewall forward and the rear section back. The only differences are the roof, doors, and doorjambs.

Starting with the "rock-solid" four-door sedan, Norwalk Vintage Fabrication started by removing the doors and all of the glass. Then they began making cuts, first at the A-pillars and next the rear of the roof, then they removed that section entirely. Norwalk Vintage next removed the doorjambs. They repeated the process on the Club Coupe, including bracing up the body, since it was "Swiss cheese," although solid enough in the roof and doors.

With cuts made at the same place on the A-pillars, and only a small patch piece required (it is quite hidden behind the drip rails), the car went back together surprisingly well, not appearing even remotely like the Frankenstein's monster it could have been. Fresh paint in the factory two-tone colors of the original sedan, Tuskon Ivory over Superior Blue, completed the look. Despite what was surely a careful process, Chuck makes it sound so easy: "So that's how the body came to be. The engine is another story."

In 1952, the original 331-cu.in. Hemi made good on 180 horsepower, a mild number by today's standards, but top dog then. Fed by a Carter two-barrel carburetor and squishing fuel at a 7.5:1 compression ratio, the engine didn't resemble much of a hot rod as we think of it. But Chuck and his engine builder had bigger plans for the Hemi.

In addition to engines for passenger cars, Chrysler also built Hemis for industrial and military use. They were used to power generators, agricultural equipment, and, yes, as you may have heard previously, air-raid-type sirens. Instead of "Fire- Power," these engines had "Chrysler Industrial" stamped into the rocker covers. Some builders liked using the Industrial engines because of low-rpm and low-hour use.

"So, here I had this Industrial engine and no particular use for it. I bought it from a fellow who was a race-car builder. He'd acquired it a long time previous and never did anything with it, but he told me that he got it from an irrigation pump. I know for example in the [Hemi] generators, they are governed to run at 1,800 rpm. And that's where they stay as long as you need them to put out water or electricity." Industrial Hemis used a very mild cam that was optimized for that constant, low-rpm torque. Often run on propane or natural gas in farm applications, they also ran much cleaner than the gasoline-powered versions found in cars. "When we've had them apart," reports Chuck, "we've found that to be the case. You find less wear in the cylinders."

Chuck contracted with Ralph Solhem of RSR Enterprises in Connecticut to rebuild the Industrial engine. The remake called for Egge pistons pushing compression to a more robust 9.0:1. The builders also installed an Isky 280-degree hydraulic cam. Additionally, they ported and polished the cylinder heads and installed oversized valves. RSR also mounted up a set of block-hugger-style headers from Hot Heads Research and Racing. A Pertronix electronic ignition system helps keep things humming along smoothly and reliably with lower maintenance. Chuck did keep the six-volt electrical system and its generator intact, but installed dual Optima six-volt batteries for double the amperage, a trick he picked up from the restorers of his four-door Saratoga.

But the real key to opening up the early Hemi's breathing came in the form of the aluminum Edmunds intake manifold now mounted atop the engine. Eddie Edmunds gained quite a reputation in the early postwar years, building high-performance intake manifolds for just about any engine out there, including Chrysler's early Hemis. His general formula was fairly simple: If one carburetor was good, then why not two? One of the hardest parts to find for the build, the vintage Edmunds intake on Chuck's Saratoga incorporates two Carter two-barrel carburetors of the type typically found on the standard 331 Hemi. Chuck estimates the output at a reasonable 250 horsepower, a significant increase over the stock 180.

Since all '52 Saratogas came equipped with Chrysler's semiautomatic FluidDrive, a dual-range/ dual-speed setup that only required the clutch for first, reverse or changing from low to high range. Chuck opted for another period hot-rod trick by having a Cadillac/ La Salle three-speed manual transmission installed. Known to be able to handle much more torque than competing gearboxes, the Caddy three-speed was favored by hot rodders of the day. Chuck found an adapter online for the transmission to work with the Hemi and also a Hurst shifter, leading to a slick, floor-mounted lever, complete with Hurst three-speed cue ball up top. "The only drawback--if it's a drawback--is there is no synchro in first," says Chuck. "You can live with that. It's actually so torquey that you can quite often start out in second unless you are on a hill, and then just come to a dead stop and put it back in first."

Given his extensive use of the car, including for long-distance rallies and tours, Chuck also opted to have a Gear Vendors electric overdrive installed. The overdrive unit, activated by a discretely installed button in place of the cigarette lighter, reduces engine rpm by approximately 20 percent in top gear. Though he reports that "It's great when you want to get better fuel economy," overall the mileage remains in the 9- to 10-mpg range.

While that marginal fuel economy might not scare a lot of musclecar fans, when you put a few hundred miles a day on a car, as opposed to a jaunt to a local cruise-in, or a few quarter-mile passes, a car's range becomes a pretty important factor. Chrysler installed a 17-gallon fuel tank in the Hemi-powered Saratoga; enough to get the typical commuter to work and back for a few days, but not enough for a road rally. So, Chuck had a 26-gallon fuel cell installed, ensuring excellent range for the modified Mopar.

Of course, a performance car that has been made to go faster is not complete until you get it to stop better as well. The Saratoga's hydraulic, ventilated drum brakes represented a pretty robust system for its day. But today, there are options. Chuck sought out the small Oregon-based operation, AAJ, which uses a mix of parts-bin bashing and custom-made brackets to create a four-wheel disc-brake system for early Mopars. The rears, for example, use Jeep Cherokee front rotors along with GM "metric" front calipers from a 1980s GM G-body. The front-disc setup on the Saratoga came from the Aspen/ Volare front-disc system from the 1970s. The whole thing is a clever use of off-the-shelf parts and minimum custom hardware.

In the suspension department, Chuck kept the same basic setup of independent with coil springs in the front and semi-elliptic leaf springs in the rear, but he sought out the beefier coils and leaf springs from the station-wagon models. He also sourced the heaviest-duty shocks he could find.

"All of that gives the car a nice stance. It handles well, rides well," Chuck reports. Though, it should be noted, he has one more change to make in this department. From the factory, the front shock absorbers mount between the top and bottom of the control arms, not a very effective use of the dampers. His plan is to follow a path similar to the one Kiekhaefer's racers did in the Fifties by mounting one end of the shock to a fixed point on the chassis, giving the car more effective shock absorption.

The whole thing sits on a set of new machined-aluminum Circle Racing Gasser Alloy wheels, made to look like Halibrand kidney bean wheels, including the finish over the non-polished, "as-cast" surface. With long-distance driving in mind, Chuck got a set of Michelin XVS radials, sized 235/70HR15, for his homebrew Saratoga Club Coupe.

Though we've highlighted enough of Chuck's penchant for long-distance tours and rallies, he knows where the Hemi engine has made its name over the years, and in the late summer of 2016, he drove the Saratoga to our Musclepalooza event to take a couple of passes down Lebanon Valley Dragway's quarter-mile strip.

In the couple of years since completing this build, Chuck has driven his Club Coupe some 4,000 miles or so, including a recent New England 1000 tour. With other early Hemi-powered cars in the garage, he knows what he likes. And when what he liked turned out to be hard to find, he had one made. That's about as hot rod as it gets.

1952 Chrysler Saratoga

SPECIFICATIONS

ENGINE

Block type: Chrysler Industrial "early" Hemi OHV V-8, cast-iron block

Cylinder heads: Cast-iron with hemispherical combustion chambers with oversize valves and ported and polished intake tracts

Displacement: 331 cubic inches

Bore x stroke: 3.8125 x 3.625 inches

Compression ratio: 9:1 (approx.)

Pistons: Egge Machine

Connecting rods: Unknown

Crankshaft: As factory installed

Horsepower @ rpm: approximately 250 @ unknown

Torque @ rpm: Unknown

Camshaft type: Iskenderian, hydraulic

Duration: 280 degrees

Lift: Unknown

Valvetrain: Factory configuration with oversized valves

Fuel system: Stock mechanical fuel pump with auxiliary electric fuel pump

Induction system: Edmunds aluminum intake with dual Carter two-barrel carburetors

Lubrication system: Full pressure

Ignition system: Pertronix electronic ignition

Exhaust system: Hot Hemi Heads steel headers

Original engine: Chrysler FirePower 331-cu.in. Hemi

TRANSMISSION

Type: Cadillac/La Salle three-speed manual, with Gear Vendors electric overdrive

Ratios: 1st: Unknown

2nd: Unknown

3rd: Unknown

Reverse: Unknown

DIFFERENTIAL

Type: Hotchkiss type, semi-floating rear axle with open, hypoid gears

Ratio: 3.73:1

STEERING

Type: Center-arm control with equal-length tie rods

Ratio: 18.2:1

Turns-to-lock: N/A

Turning circle: N/A

BRAKES

Type: Four-wheel hydraulic disc brakes, power assisted

Front: 11-inch Mopar A-body/F-body unicast rotors; 1973-'77 Chevrolet Monte Carlo calipers

Rear: 11-inch Jeep Cherokee rotors; "metric" calipers from GM G-body

SUSPENSION

Front: Independent, coil springs, upper and lower control arms, hydraulic shock absorbers; anti-roll bar

Rear: Live axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs; hydraulic shock absorbers

WHEELS & TIRES

Wheels: Circle Racing Gasser Alloy Series 02 aluminum alloy

Front/Rear: 15 x 4½ inches

Tires: Michelin XVS radials

Front/Rear: 235/70HR15