Plymouth Satellite 1965 – 426 Wedge

This 1965 Plymouth Satellite runs a 426 under the hood, but it’s not the Hemi that made that number famous. A year before the legendary 426 Hemi arrived, Plymouth briefly offered a 426 Wedge that vanished from the lineup almost as fast as it appeared. Combined with a rare copper color code and Satellite’s top-trim status, this is a genuine one-year-only muscle car snapshot.

We’re taking a look at a 1965 Plymouth Satellite powered by the 426 Wedge V8 and wearing a truly unique ’60’s Copper color.

A ’65 Plymouth wearing a rare copper paint code and a 426 under the hood sounds like it should be running the legendary Hemi that made that displacement famous. It isn’t. A full year before Chrysler’s 426 Hemi arrived and rewrote what “426” meant to muscle car fans, Plymouth was already stuffing a completely different 426 into its lineup – one built around a wedge-shaped combustion chamber instead of the hemispherical design that would soon overshadow it. This particular Satellite sat at the very top of Plymouth’s B-body lineup that year, wearing standard bucket seats and a console most rivals still charged extra for. So what happened to this “other” 426, and why did it disappear from Plymouth’s brochures almost as soon as the real Hemi showed up?

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Two Different Engines, One Confusing Number

The 1965 Satellite topped Plymouth’s Belvedere-based B-body lineup, standard with a 273-cubic-inch V8 and offering a climbing ladder of options up through 318, 361, 383, and the top-tier 426 “Commando” wedge. That 426 Wedge used a conventional wedge-shaped combustion chamber and should not be confused with the 426 Hemi that arrived the following year and quickly became one of the most famous engines in muscle car history. Chrysler dropped the Street Wedge after just this one season, and “426” would forever after mean Hemi in the minds of most enthusiasts.

A Short-Lived Option in a Short Production Run

Plymouth built 23,341 Satellite two-door hardtops for 1965 alongside just 1,860 convertibles, making any surviving 426 Wedge car a genuine rarity today. Add in the unusual copper color on this particular example, and you’ve got a combination that was uncommon even when the car was new – a snapshot of Plymouth’s lineup in the single model year between “just a big engine” and the Hemi era that defined the rest of the decade.

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