When you turn the key and hear all eight cylinders roar, the American rebel yell is unleashed. Lifting the engine hood to show off your car to your buddies, you're taken back to 1964 when American metal was king, Beach Boys topped the charts, and you couldn't wait to get to the track on a Friday night for a drag race. Ok, maybe this isn't Grease II, but you get the point.
"It's the kind of car that appeals to the ego. If you own a Hemi, then you know you have the baddest engine on the block,"says David Hakim, Chrysler's program manager for Mopar.
Awaken the beast
With environmental concerns, fuel economy, and safety influencing car design more each year, many car lovers feel that Detroit's missing a little something these days. For the purpose of this article, let's just call it "spirit" .
To hear Nick Cappa, Manager of Advanced Technology Communications for Chrysler, explain it, Chrysler engineers developed a great engine in 2003 with a lot of power and some fuel economy bits thrown in?namely the gas-saving Multi-Displacement System--and it happened to look an awful lot like another engine they had seen before. And so the Hemi was reborn.
The engine couldn't have hit a more tumultuous market. In 2004, America was at war, Detroit carmakers were getting clobbered on all fronts, the SUV "once the darling of car shows" was getting the cold shoulder, and consumers were feeling the pinch at the pump. In retrospect, Chrysler should have been taken out back for a good roughing up, but the critics were relatively restrained. Perhaps you could say they showed respect.
A cult is born
The Chrysler Hemi is the kind of engine that legends are made of. Car enthusiasts of any breed become Mark Twain when they talk about the Hemi-powered cars sweeping the 1964 Daytona 500 and brought home the first, second, and third place trophies. They're also a little proud when they complain about its disappearance from NASCAR after officials issued severe restrictions on cars that chose to compete with Hemi engines.
And although Chrysler ceased its production 1972, you could say Hemis never really went away. Edged out by EPA fuel restrictions and the insurance industry's penalties that made the Dodge Challenger and Plymouth Cuda all but uninsurable to the 25 or younger market, gearheads kept the legend alive with Hemi clubs across the country. Through ads in car magazines they traded hard-to-find parts and competed yearly and won--in the NHRA races and shows.
Due to their limited production number and brief appearance in the market, mint condition Hemis (the cars, not just the engines) are hard to find. Today, some original 1964-1971 Hemis can fetch more than $1 million at the Barrett-Jackson auto show. The irony is that when they were produced, they cost approximately $5,000.
Hakim owns one of them--a vintage 1971 Dodge Hemi Charger R/T with a 426 cubic inch engine that he drives on weekends during the summer and shows off at car events. He also owns a 2006 Dodge Charger R/T Hemi with a 5.7 liter engine that he drives every day because it gets good gas mileage, he says without even a hint of sarcasm.
Does that Honda have a hemi?
Only Chrysler vehicles can have Hemis. Hemi is a trademarked name that refers to the hemispherical shape of the combustion chamber and the placement of the valves. Other manufacturers may use a derivative of the Hemi engine or have similarities, but they're no Hemi. "They don't have the same combustion size, shape, or valve placement" Hakim explains.
But is that all that really makes a Hemi a Hemi? The power purist may argue that you can get a smaller engine with more horsepower, or that there are other Chrysler vehicles with even more powerful engines. "That may be the case," says Hakim, "but they don't have the heritage".
And it's the heritage and cache that will keep this engine on the market for years to come. To satisfy regulations, pocketbooks, and conscience of buyers, Chrysler outfitted Hemis with its Multi-Displacement System, which enables the car to shut down cylinders when they're not needed and become more fuel-efficient. Beginning mid-2008, Chrysler will introduce hybrid Hemis. But no one buys a Hemi for its fuel-economy.
Strong appeal
The new fleet gives boomers a second chance to buy their dream car. Or for those that missed the muscle car era entirely, it enables them to experience a piece of Americana and feel nostalgia for a time that they never knew.
Michelle Stallard, a student in Gross Pointe, Michigan and former JR Thompson account executive once responsible for Mopar account--was born after Hemis disappeared from the market, but she sees their appeal. She's always been around Chrysler cars, and even owns the 1968 440 Chrysler New Yorker that her father used as a commuter car in the 1980s. But despite the strong ties to Chrysler, two generations of her family have worked there--even she has a hard time understanding how rabid fanatics are about these cars. "These are the best of the best, but people are really enthusiastic about Hemis. They travel all over the country and attend swap meets looking for intake valves," she explains. "It's kind of like looking at groupies from the band's perspective".
Perhaps the engine's appeal can only be explained by driving it. Mr. Hakim sits in his car and turns the key to make his engine come alive. As he revs the engine he describes its allure as he sees it, "The 5.7 or 6.1 Hemi engine offers the sound, the feel, the power, the mystique there is no other engine like it, either foreign or domestic". Detroit's finally showing some spirit.
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