1964 Plymouth Savoy Stage III Max Wedge of His Dreams Turned Out to Be Even More Special Than He Thought

A teenager who fell in love with Mopars watching quarter-mile battles at a Rhode Island airstrip in the early ’60s spent decades chasing down the car that started it all: a 1964 Plymouth Savoy carrying Chrysler’s Max Wedge engine in its final and rarest form. Here’s why that one model year, and that one drivetrain combination, was never repeated.

Bob Chaves was just a kid standing trackside at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Charlestown, Rhode Island, watching big Chevys and Pontiacs and Mopars battle it out for quarter-mile bragging rights, when something in him decided this was going to be a lifelong obsession. It wasn’t a factory ad or a magazine spread that hooked him on Mopars specifically — it was watching his friend Gary Smith’s 1963 Plymouth do work at the strip. When the 1964 Plymouth Savoy landed, Bob called it flatly the best-looking car he’d ever seen. What he didn’t know yet was that the car he’d eventually chase down decades later would be carrying an engine option so short-lived, so deliberately overbuilt for one purpose, that Chrysler only offered it for a single model year before pulling the plug entirely.

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The Engine That Only Lasted One Year in This Form

That engine is the Max Wedge, and 1964 was its swan song. Chrysler had debuted the Max Wedge V8 back in 1962 for drag-strip domination, built around the RB block, and by 1963 the bore had grown to 4.25 inches to bring displacement to 426 cubic inches. By 1964 — the final year Chrysler offered it, badged as the Stage III — buyers could order the Super Stock 426 in either an 11.0:1 compression tune good for a factory-claimed 415 horsepower, or a screaming 12.5:1 version rated at 425. Both breathed through a pair of four-barrel carburetors set up in a cross-ram arrangement, a layout that looked as aggressive under the hood as the car sounded at wide-open throttle. A milder 426 Street Wedge with a single four-barrel was also available for buyers who wanted the mystique without quite as much commitment, rated at 365 horsepower.

The Four-Speed That Finally Showed Up, and Almost Nobody Ordered

1964 was also the only year you could pair a Max Wedge with a manual transmission at all — Chrysler simply hadn’t built a manual gearbox tough enough to survive behind the engine until the A-833 four-speed arrived that year, and even then only 61 Dodges and 65 Plymouths ever left the factory with that combination.

A Dream Seeded at the Drag Strip, Realized Decades Later

A Savoy built to that exact recipe isn’t just a rare car; it’s a snapshot of the single model year where Chrysler’s drag-strip engineering and its transmission engineering finally caught up with each other, right before the whole Max Wedge program was retired for good. For a kid who fell for Mopars trackside as a teenager, tracking one down decades later isn’t just collecting — it’s closing a loop that started at a Rhode Island airstrip.

The Savoy’s Humble Reputation Before the Max Wedge Arrived

Before it became a factory drag-strip weapon, the Plymouth Savoy occupied the bottom rung of Plymouth’s full-size lineup, a plain, low-trim model aimed at fleet buyers and budget-conscious families rather than performance enthusiasts chasing quarter-mile bragging rights. That unassuming reputation is exactly what made the Max Wedge-equipped Savoy such an effective drag racing tool: a stripped-down, lightweight body with none of the sound deadening, trim, or comfort features that added weight to fancier Plymouth models, wrapped around one of the most serious engines Chrysler had ever built.

Cross-Ram Induction: An Aggressive Solution to a Real Problem

The cross-ram intake manifold feeding the Max Wedge’s dual four-barrel carburetors wasn’t just for show. Mounting the carburetors on long, crossed intake runners let engineers tune the manifold’s runner length for strong high-RPM breathing, a genuine performance solution to the challenge of feeding a big-inch V8 enough air at the engine speeds where drag racing actually happens. That distinctive under-hood layout, with carburetors sitting on opposite sides of the engine from their respective cylinder banks, remains one of the most visually striking factory induction setups Detroit ever built.

Bob Chaves’ Decades-Long Search

Finding a genuine, correctly documented 1964 Max Wedge Savoy decades after the fact isn’t a simple matter of browsing classified ads. Cars built in such small numbers, with drivetrain combinations this specific, require real detective work to verify authenticity, chasing down build sheets, matching numbers, and provenance records to confirm a car is genuinely what a seller claims it to be. For an enthusiast like Bob Chaves, whose interest traces back to a specific afternoon at a Rhode Island drag strip decades earlier, that search wasn’t just about acquiring a car, it was about closing a loop that had been open since childhood.

Why Max Wedge Cars Command Serious Money Today

Genuine factory Max Wedge cars occupy rarefied territory in the Mopar collector world, commanding attention and money far beyond what a standard full-size 1964 Plymouth would ever fetch, precisely because the combination of a purpose-built race engine, a short production window, and decades of attrition have made surviving, documented examples exceptionally scarce. Add the four-speed manual’s near-mythical rarity within that already-small population, and a correctly equipped car becomes one of the most sought-after pieces of factory drag racing history from the entire muscle car era.

A Legacy That Outlasted the Program Itself

Chrysler’s Max Wedge program only ran from 1962 through 1964, but its influence on the company’s later high-performance engines proved far more durable than the three model years it was actually offered. The lessons learned building a factory-supported drag racing engine fed directly into Chrysler’s later 426 Hemi program, meaning the short-lived Max Wedge effectively laid the groundwork for the engine that would go on to define an entire era of Mopar muscle car performance.

How the Max Wedge Compared to Its Direct Competitors

Chrysler’s Max Wedge program competed directly against Chevrolet’s 409 and Ford’s 406/427 factory drag packages during the same early-1960s window, each manufacturer racing to build the most formidable factory-supported drag engine it could within NHRA and NASCAR’s homologation rules. That three-way factory rivalry pushed all three companies to develop increasingly specialized, purpose-built race engines faster than they otherwise might have, and the Max Wedge’s cross-ram induction and lightweight body pairing was Chrysler’s specific answer to that competitive pressure.

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