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whats the biggest mopar?
i was wondering what the largest cubic inch mopar motor was/is i think it might be the 540. this is hard to find on the internet compared to chevy motors (705 cid) and ford (780 cid)
The largest "factory" engine I ever heard of was a 440 cubic inch. It made its way into almost every body style from the Plymouth Satellite to the big Chrysler. And even into the lightweight Dodge Dart GTS for the 1969 year!
There were guys who pumped up the displacement on their own by taking the engines to speed shops.
I know of a 1968 Dodge Coronet two door with no fancy trim and a 318 engine emblem that factory engineers used as a mule, a playtoy. They cheated like crazy back in the heydays of muscle cars and street drags. It may be hard to believe now but back then on the weekends guys would hang out in places where they could safely drag race away from the public eye and police scrutiny. If a Pontiac won a bunch of races on Sunday there would be guys at the dealer on Monday buying the same car. "If it wins races it sells", was the mentality. Enter two very hip engineers from a Chrysler facility in Detroit. These guys were totally determined to own the streets with their Coronet. They pulled the engine and increased the 440 cubic inch to 472 and went racing after a brief break in. For weeks on end nothing could beat it. Then one night a sleeper Chevelle got the best of them. They drove back to the shop and pulled the engine the next day. Chevelles started coming off the lots faster than usual. A few days later they installed a balanced and much improved 500 cube engine from a modified 440 block. Two days later after breaking the engine in they smoked the same Chevelle. A short while later a vicious sounding Mustang showed up and beat them by a car length in the quarter mile. The Mustangs were selling the next Monday. Back to the shop they went. This time they went all out. The engine was replaced with a 552 cube monster. The engine was so thirsty it required two four barrel carburetors mounted on a high rise manifold and a high volume electric fuel pump had to be added as well as an extra gas tank in the trunk. They installed some very efficient headers that dumped into collectors which allowed three inch exhaust pipes with resonators instead of mufflers. They removed all the sealer in the body and drilled holes in the frame and body wherever they could. The glass in the sides and back window were replaced with Plexiglas and the hood and trunk were swapped for fiberglass. They took about 500 pounds off the car and no one knows what the horsepower was, but the car could smoke some big fat Mickey Thompson tires which was the best you could buy back then. They went looking for the Mustang. Later on, they found out it too was a cheater built by a Ford engineer who was a Carroll Shelby fan. They beat the Mustang off the line and continued to pull away until they ran out of space to run. The next Monday Dodge Coronets were selling like hotcakes. I read the story in a magazine years ago. It was submitted by the engineers themselves.
One other trick they pulled to increase car sales was to hitch a lightweight trailer to the Coronet and put big refrigerator boxes in the trailer. The boxes were empty and had been reinforced with some Plexiglas strips to hold their shape. They would go out and beat cars at the stop lights!
How embarrassing would that be to have your nice, new, hot Chevelle or Mustang beaten by some old guy in a little old Lady's car pulling a trailer with two refrigerators!! I laughed so hard I had sore ribs the next day.
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