This was a very ordinary car with an extraordinary engine and
drivetrain. The engine was developed in 1964 so that Chrysler
Corporation vehicles could win at NASCAR stock car racing and NHRA drag
racing. It displaced about 7 liters and developed around 600 horsepower
in race trim. It was a simple cast-iron V8 of cam-in-block
configuration, but huge ports and hemispherical combustion chambers
with sewer-sized valves made it extremely powerful. When the Dodge and
Plymouth vehicles finished first, second, and third at Daytona, first
time out with the new engine, NASCAR objected to the use of a
powerplant that couldn't be bought in showrooms, so Chrysler introduced
a street version for 1966. It was detuned to a mere 450 horsepower or
so and bolted into cheap two-door sedans. (Advertised horsepower was
425, but the dynos say otherwise.) This car was one of the very first
to be sold and has been driven only 4000 miles in the near forty years
that have elapsed since it left the showroom. I'll post an engine pic
soon.
Paul
On Jun 9, 2005, at 12:48 AM, Boris Liberman wrote:
Hi!
I shot a car this morning for a magazine article. It's an extremely
rare '66 Plymouth Belvedere HP2. This was the car that Chrysler built
to convince NASCAR that the hemi was a production engine. It was a
very basic car with vinyl bench seats and very little trim. Only a
couple thousand were built with the HP2 designation. Very few are
left. This one has 4000 original miles on the clock. It was raced in
the sixties, then stored in a climate controlled warehouse for thirty
years. A few years ago it was restored to its original color and
returned to exact factory delivered specs. It's valued at over
$100,000. I believe it was about $4000 new.
I shot this pan with the K85/1.8 at 1/30th and f11 with a polarizer.
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3428842&size=lg
Those across-the-pond people never cease to surprise me :-)... I am
young, too young, so I'll have to ask - at the time when these cars
were produced - was it like a WOW car or was it like a regular car?
Thanks for the story and the shot... The motion tracking thing is
something I never tried... By the way, in Israel we have 7 digit
license plates... In 1980 there was a transition from 6 digits to 7.
Last week I saw a Chevrolet truck with 3 (three!!!) digit plate
actually driving around our town... Though the truck had modern alloy
wheels...
Perhaps I should collect some images of older cars here and post
them... Hopefully some folks will be at least mildly amused :-).
Boris
