So what's the deal then? I know most of you guys knows these notorious engine from like the picture above; 1970 Plymouth Superbird 'Hemi', yeah the Hemi, we're talking about the all American right here, the Funny looking Hemispherical engine. But to top of it, why we haven't seen them in Nascar? sounds good enough right?
So it goes back when World War 2 has ended, late 1940s. At that time, where everyone wanted a car, like powerful and fast one, it makes sense since US road are mostly straight road. To fulfill this demand, Chrysler introduced not just its first V8, I believe I already told about this one, but also with unique cylinder head designs. These new engines had combustion chambers that were cast around in the shape of "hemisphere". This design allowed engineers to place the intake and exhaust valves on opposite side of the combustion chamber which lets itself to large valve surfaces and robust head cooling passages. Actually I too, just knew how these works
to 1950s and 60s, where Chrysler corp made a lot of these Hemis. With Model such as Chrysler (with the FirePower engine), DeSoto (with the FireDome engine), Dodge ( with the Red Ram engine) all had the Hemi engines, also sounds familiar but strange at the same time, but that's just me haha. The outcome was great, the automotive public just lovvveed ther new, powerful cars. Also, the fuel costs at that time was like historic low, like really low, we can't go back at that time again :(
But its not always a good story, since from the beginning, this engine was so complex, cost so much money to Chrysler to just to produce them but yeah, it delivered the 'Performance' alright, time goes by, the engine design moving out to the cheaper wedge head designs.
Why its banned?
Smokey was a master at reading the rulebook, understanding what it was trying to tell him, and then looking for each and every way he could subvert and circumvent the words on the page. He was an expert at following the spirit, if not the word, of the law. According to one of many legends surrounding this car, (and let me tell you, there are some good ones) Smokey modified the bodywork on his car, adding little lips and winglets and smoothing rough edges to squeeze a little more speed out of the car. When he went to show the Nascar officials at scruitineering before the race, he proved the car's legitimacy by using the first body template in Nascar. He measured his race car, and then put those measurements on a Chevelle pulled from the parking lot. They matched exactly. The officials were not aware however that the test car also belonged to Smokey.
From, the article link that will provided in the end
Also worth quoting, straight from the article;
When researching this article we spoke to the guys at Zeigler DCJ Grandville and they told us that in 1964 the stock Chrysler 426 HEMI Engine was actually so powerful that it was banned from NASCAR races as “unfair competition”, yet you could buy one to drive to work!
Makes you think like maybe there's always a politic in any racing association haha.
Source for this article!
