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A soft yellow paint job and gold cloth interior make this 1966 Plymouth Belvedere II look like grandma’s Sunday driver, until you find the 426 Hemi hiding under the hood. Chrysler built the Street Hemi to satisfy NASCAR homologation rules after banning the race version outright, and only a handful of Belvederes ever left the factory with one. Read on to find out just how rare a combination like this really was.
A 1963 Plymouth Belvedere called the Asphalt Angel did not earn that nickname with paint. Under a plain mid-size hood sits Chrysler’s 426 Max Wedge, offered in 1963 at 415 or 425 horsepower with a cross-ram intake, twin Carter four-barrels and compression high enough to require race fuel. Chrysler sold these cars with documentation warning they were not intended for street use. Read on to find out why so few of them survived intact.
A mildly modified 2004 Dodge SRT-4 takes on a four-speed, 383-powered 1965 Plymouth Belvedere in a street matchup that should have favored the turbocharged compact. More than a decade of comments still argue over who really won, split between Mopar loyalists and turbo-four believers. Watch to see whether raw displacement or forced induction wins the day.
A red Plymouth Belvedere and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix face off in this shot, representing two completely different takes on 1965 performance — one a street-brawler mid-size that could be ordered with a 365-horsepower 426, the other a personal luxury coupe riding high off Pontiac’s Car of the Year sweep. Which one you’d have picked in period probably says a lot about whether you wanted raw displacement or chrome-trimmed comfort. Here’s how the Belvedere and Grand Prix actually stack up, spec for spec.
The 1967 Plymouth Belvedere lived a double life — one version chased down traffic violators for the LAPD and starred in Adam-12s pilot episode, while another, ordered with the rare 425 horsepower 426 Hemi option, could out-muscle nearly everything else on the road. Only 720 buyers checked that Hemi box that year, making it one of the most overlooked factory Hemi cars Mopar ever built.
A caption claiming a 528-cubic-inch Hemi on a 1965 Plymouth Belvedere doesn’t add up as a factory spec, and that’s the tell that this convertible is a resto-mod built around a modern crate engine. Here’s what a real 1965 Belvedere came with from the factory, how Plymouth’s midsize lineup was reshuffled that year, and where a 528 Hemi like this one likely came from.
A red Plymouth Belvedere and a silver Pontiac Grand Prix sit side by side in this 1965 photo, representing two completely different ideas of what a great car should be that year. This piece breaks down the wedge V8 hiding under the Belvedere’s plain sheet metal, the restyled Grand Prix’s bid for personal-luxury prestige, and how rare and valuable each has become today.
David Meyer’s 1966 Plymouth Belvedere, built by coachbuilder Troy Trepanier and nicknamed “Northern Bel,” hides a 526-cubic-inch HEMI and twin rear-mounted turbochargers behind period-correct sheet metal. Featured on MotorTrend’s House of Muscle series, the restomod is reported to run 9-second quarter-miles at over 200 mph. Watch to see how a stock-looking ’66 Mopar hides that much firepower.
This 1967 Plymouth Belvedere carries the 383 cubic inch V8 that powered Plymouth’s mid-size lineup below the range-topping GTX and its 440 or 426 Hemi. Overlooked next to its more famous siblings, a well-preserved 383 Belvedere is becoming one of the more attainable ways into genuine 1967 Mopar muscle. See the details that make this survivor worth a second look.