Mopar had no such “image” product at the time. Just some drag racer guys running Hemi’s in “Slingshot Dragsters”, as they called them. Enter a bunch of crew cut engineers from Chrysler town. Dick Maxwell, Jim Thornton and Tom Hoover. They were Chrysler line engineers during the week, and on the weekend fledging knuckle busting drag racing sons-a-bitches. Together they formed the famed RamChargers racing team. Working with limited resources, they left an impressive mark on drag racing during this era and laid the groundwork for what was to come. These guys knew their stuff. They really made those MoPars fly. In 1960, in part of what the RamCharger guy were doing, Chrysler introduced a wild aluminum cross-ram intake set-up for the 383, which placed the carbs over the inner fenders and fed the air/fuel mixture through long two runners which ran over the valve covers on opposite sides of the engine (the first “cross-ram manifold”). They also introduced a nasty short-ram setup, but only through the parts department. The RamChargers guys took what was available to the racing world and loosely applied it to “street” cars. This gave the appearance of hot street cars (Dodge and Plymouth alike) and eventually led to those options being offered in cars. They were fast and dominated the strips everywhere.

This work resulted in the 1962 introduction of the “Max Wedge 413”, which came equipped with not only a cross-ram setup, but also a pair of huge, upswept cast iron exhaust manifolds. They looked like boat headers, going up before going down in the fender wells. Wild looking stuff, especially for the factory. Pistons were available in two compression ratios: 11:1 and 13.5:1. Imagine, a 13.5:1 factory engine! These parts made the 413 Max Wedge cars all but unusable on the street, but at the drag strip the results were immediate. The 1962 N.H.R.A. record books show four class records established by the 413. With the correct gearing and tires, mid-twelve-second passes became commonplace. But they still had that quirky styling. These “B” body cars were overweight, bulky and ugly. OK, nearly everything else was ugly in 1962, but Chrysler won first prize here. Jan and Dean sang about the 413. It was an awesome power plant. “It happened on the strip where the road is wide, two cool shorts standing side by side, my fuel-injected Sting-Ray and a 413, revving up our engines and it sounds real mean . . . The Super Stock Dodge winding out in low, but my fuel-injected Sting-Ray’s really startin’ to go, to get the traction I’m a riding the clutch, the pressure plates burning and a she’s too much. . .” The MoPars were fast, and they were showing everyone from east to west how fast they were. In 1963, the Max Wedge grew to 426cid due to a larger 4.25” bore. These were referred to as the ‘Stage II’ engines. Now, Chrysler began producing special bodies which would complement these engines, using aluminum front ends, trunk-mounted batteries, hood scoops and other lightweight parts. By this time MoPars virtually owned the Super Stock classes in the N.H.R.A. Ford countered with the Galaxie Lightweight with the 427FE, while Chevrolet introduced it’s 427 Biscayne. These were also full sized, heavy, bulky cars. The ‘Stage II’ versions of the Max Wedge motors were significant because they opened up the science of cylinder- head air flow engineering. The RamChargers guys figured out if you could flow more air/fuel in, and get it out, then you made more horsepower. The end result of their work on flow would lead to the rebirth of the (new or second) Hemi. The final Max Wedge, the ‘Stage III’, was released in 1964. The biggest improvements were a revised cylinder head and new camshaft design. This was thought to be the pinnacle of the Max Wedge series. However, in 1964 the Hemi was re-introduced, the engine that would blow away the Max Wedge motors and (nearly) everything else in terms of performance (more on that in the next series). The Max Wedge motors that gave the MoPar engineers time to perfect multi-carb setups, camshaft designs, valve and port shapes, and bottom-end reliability. However, the guys in the styling department must have all come from Rambler or Studebaker, as there still wasn’t a platform that spelled performance. The “A” bodied MoPars (Dodge Lancer and Plymouth Valiant) were too small and sported the Slant-6 engine. They were in the Nova and Falcon class. Econo-boxes. In 1965, Plymouth introduced the Barracuda by adapting a fish-bowl rear glass window to the Valiant. Though it had some success, it couldn’t match up to what Ford was doing with the Mustang and Pontiac with the GTO. Dodge introducted the 1966 Charger during the Rose Bowl game halftime, and for all of it’s hoopla and glitz, it sold less than 39,000 cars in it’s two year run. No Savoy, Fury, Belvedere, Polara, Coronet or anything else spelled young. They just didn’t get it. Hell, even the “Little old lady from Pasadena” drove a “brand new shiny red Super Stock Dodge.” Throughout the line, Chrysler still had stodgy, square, fast but funky looking cars. Chrysler had two main objectives as it entered the mid-sixties and the “Horsepower Wars.” What platforms could we put the new Hemi in, and how to make a car that would peel the young market away from Ford and Pontiac with the Mustang and the GTO.