Elephants on parade:
Street Hemis featured at Hemmings Concours d’Elegance
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It was one of the most feared engines to come out of Detroit, a legend in its own time, and has served as the basis for more drag strip records and bouts of auction fever than perhaps any other V-8. The Street Hemi proved that sometimes size does matter, and this weekend the seventh annual Hemmings Concours d’Elegance will feature cars powered by the storied elephant engine.
Chrysler Corporation’s foray into the realm of performance engines dates back to 1951 when the company released the 331.1-cu.in. V-8, which also happened to be the first V-8 developed by their engineers. It was unique right from the start, employing hemispherical combustion chambers, free-flowing intake and exhaust ports, and sizable corresponding valves linked to dual rocker arm shafts atop each cylinder head. Called the “Fire Power V-8,” they were impressively powerful in both production vehicles and, in the mid-Fifties, between the wheel wells of specially-prepared Chryslers competing in NASCAR races across the country. Unfortunately, they were also complex and expensive to manufacture, leading Chrysler engineers to release the polyspherical “semi-hemis” later in the decade. By 1959, the first generation of Hemi engines had vanished from dealer literature, but not for long.
Intense competition in NHRA and NASCAR races, which in turn spurred showroom sales, prompted the parent company to reexamine the Hemi in the early Sixties. Born into this ring of high-horsepower fire was the “Max Wedge” 426-cu.in. Hemi, complete with a cross-ram intake and dual four-barrel carburetors. This boded well for quarter-mile conquistadors; however, NASCAR rules adopted in the late Fifties prevented multiple carburetors, supercharging and fuel injection. In short, the Max Wedge with a single four-barrel was no match against Pontiac’s circle track dominance.
Mother Mopar’s solution was a freshly designed intake manifold and corresponding deep-breathing hemispherical cylinder heads. The new Hemi made its debut at the 1964 running of the Daytona 500. Richard Petty dominated the event in his Plymouth, while his Mopar brethren claimed second, third and fifth places. During the NASCAR season, the Hemi would claim 26 Grand National (now Spring Sprint Cup) victories. The only catch was that NASCAR claimed the engine was not “stock,” meaning available to the general public, so the Hemi – and Ford’s SOHC 427 – were banned from 1965 NASCAR races until an agreement was eventually reached between Chrysler and NASCAR late in the season (Richard Petty and the Hemi engine did compete late in the 1965 NASCAR season). Part of that agreement was making the engine available in street-legal production vehicles beginning with the 1966 model year.
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