04/14/2007
Most of you know there were hardtop Race Hemi cars built but you almost never see any articles on these cars. The reason for that is there are only a handful of them still in existence today. Myself, I have only physically seen three-first hand. Two 1964 Plymouth Belvedere hardtops and one 1964 Dodge 440 hardtop. One Plymouth was an automatic and the other two were four speed cars. That raises the question as to just how many hardtop Race Hemis were actually built? Previously these production numbers were unavailable, but with the new Max Wedge and Race Hemi books from Darrell Davis the word is out. Below are the totals for Dodge and Plymouth from Darrell's book. To find out the details of each car regarding body color, interior trim and color plus basic options including transmission get yourself a copy of Darrell's books. It's interesting to note there were no Race Hemi hardtops built in 1965.
1964 Race Hemi Hardtop Production:
Dodge 440 Hardtop -
22 automatic transmission
13 manual transmission
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35 total production
Plymouth Belvedere Hardtop -
18 automatic transmission
17 manual transmission
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35 total production
That comes to just 70 of these cars being built. I have been asked if they made that many then why don't you ever see or hear about hardtop Race Hemis? My guess is that most of them ended up on the tracks of NASCAR and you know what happened to most of them. CRASH, BOOM BAMM!!
Just a guess ...