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Posts Tagged: Hemi

Chrysler built only 16 examples of a fuel-injected 392 Hemi for the 1958 300D, and 15 of them were quietly retrofitted back to carburetors within the same model year. That’s just one chapter in a decade where Chrysler’s FirePower Hemi and DeSoto’s own separate Hemi family kept leapfrogging each other in displacement and horsepower. Read on to find out how a 331-cubic-inch engine grew into some of the most powerful production V8s of the 1950s.

Vanguard Motor Sales built this 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda from a standard Barracuda into a documented 440 Six Pack recreation — rotisserie rebuild, correct casting numbers, Hemi four-speed, and barely 520 miles since completion. Every chassis upgrade and cabin detail is accounted for. See what separates an honest recreation from a shortcut build.

A 383-cubic-inch engine putting down almost exactly 383 horsepower is the kind of coincidence that doesn’t happen often enough for anyone to plan around it — but that’s exactly what this blue 1968 Dodge Charger did on the dyno at a Mopar show in Avondale, Arizona. Three pulls, real numbers, and an exhaust note commenters called worth hearing all the way to redline.

A 1929 Plymouth street rod that stops people cold, not for its paint but for what’s rumbling under the hood: a diesel engine nobody expects to find in a prewar hot rod. Diesel swaps are rare in this world because none of the easy bolt-in kits exist, which makes builds like this a genuine rarity on any show floor. It’s proof that the most memorable street rods aren’t always the ones running the expected combination.

Clay and Sons Mopar recycling yard in rural Missouri hides more factory-original muscle than most private collections, and The Auto Archaeologist’s latest find proves it: a real 1968 GTX still wearing its original 426 Hemi and 4-speed. The yard behind it holds Darts, a Barracuda, and a yellow Coronet that have viewers calling it Mopar heaven in the comments. Watch to see what else is sitting in that field.

In 1970, Plymouth gave the Barracuda an entirely new body just to make room for the 426 Hemi — something the old Valiant-based platform could never have handled. The two model years that followed brought colors named “Moulin Rouge” and “Sassy Grass Green,” a four-headlight styling change found in no other year, and a Hemi-powered racing chapter that oddly plays out better in France than in America. Read on to find out what made this brief window so collectible.

Only 63 buyers ever ordered the 426 Hemi in a 1971 Dodge Charger R/T, making it one of the rarest — and most consequential — muscle cars Chrysler ever built. Emissions rules and rising insurance costs were closing in fast, and this would be the last year the legendary Hemi was available on the street. Read on to find out why numbers-matching survivors command such fierce attention today.

Dodge didn’t build the Charger 500 to win car shows — they built it to win NASCAR races, flush grille and all. Bud Lindemann puts this 426 Hemi example through acceleration, braking, and cornering tests loaded with one-liners that are still quoted decades later. Watch to see why enthusiasts call it the holy grail of Chargers.

Only 468 of the 37,344 Chargers Dodge built for 1966 left the factory with the 426 Street Hemi under the hood, and fewer still got the four-speed this fastback needed to use all of it. This is the story of the year Chrysler finally let its feared race engine loose on the street, and why almost nobody actually bought one. Read on to find out just how close this combination came to never existing at all.

Only about 39 1969 Dodge Charger Daytonas were built with a factory 426 Hemi, and owner Tom Lembeck handed his keys to a first-time driver anyway. What follows is a stalled burnout attempt, two nervous laughs, and a reminder of exactly why NASCAR’s wing-car era got regulated out of existence. Watch to see what happens when someone drives a piece of Mopar history for the very first time.

Only 475 of the roughly 96,000 Chargers Dodge built for 1968 left the factory with a 426 Hemi under the hood, and this 4-speed example pairs that rare engine with a color so scarce that surviving examples can be counted on one hand. Read on to find out just how thin the numbers get, and why proving a car is truly one of a kind is harder than it sounds.

Chrysler built roughly 738 Hemi Coronets across the entire 1966 lineup, and this one carries a combination rare enough that plenty of lifelong Mopar guys have never seen one in person. Under unassuming sheet metal sits a genuine numbers-matching 426 Street Hemi and four-speed, a pairing that cost the original buyer nearly a thousand dollars and scared off almost everyone else. Read on to find out just how thin that production number really gets.

A 2014 Camaro SS and a 2015 Dodge Challenger RT go head to head in this Los Angeles street race, but the real story is the setup — the host studies the Camaro’s 6.2-liter LS3 before racing it against his own daily-driven, 5.7-liter HEMI Challenger. The displacement gap suggests an easy winner. Real pavement doesn’t always agree. Watch the pull to see which V8 actually gets there first.

Street Car Video brings out what it calls the fastest V3 Cadillac CTS-V in the country to face a Kenne Bell-supercharged Shelby GT500 and two Hellcats pushing past 800 horsepower each. A luxury sedan against dedicated muscle car hardware sounds like a mismatch on paper. Watch the full lineup to see whether the CTS-V’s supercharged LT4 can actually keep up.

Jay Leno had one thing left on his automotive bucket list: a ride in the Hurst Hemi Under Glass with legendary stunt driver Bob Riggle at the controls. What happened on that run turned a routine exhibition into one of the most-watched clips in Jay Leno’s Garage history, with nearly eight million views and a comment section full of people who could not believe what they had just watched. Watch the video and see for yourself.

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