1966 Plymouth Satellite Hemi

The “official” Muscle Car era began in 1961, when Chevrolet introduced the 409. It lasted ten years until the early ‘70s when the market was gutted by insurance premiums and the cars began to be strangled by emissions limits. Of course, the Muscle Car didn’t emerge fully formed like a butterfly from a chrysalis. It evolved, quickly, more like Stephen King dragonflies.

In the early Fifties, Cadillac, Lincoln and Chrysler all launched large displacement overhead valve V8s. GM and Ford followed a simple design direction, aligning their valves in a wedge-shaped combustion chamber. Chrysler adopted a more intricate system utilizing a hemispherical combustion chamber with valves arranged in two rows. It was more complicated in operation and manufacture, but it followed high performance tenets pioneered by Henri, Miller, Duesenberg and Stutz, breathing through short intake and exhaust passages with the valve axes inclined to minimize sharp bends. The Hemi...