As a member of the celebrated Ramchargers and godfather of the legendary and powerful Chrysler HEMI engine, Tom Hoover has played an important role in the evolution of drag racing and its subsequent influence on muscle car culture. Hoover is considered a legend by some who are considered drag racing legends themselves. We recently had the opportunity to talk with him about the "golden era" of racing, when vehicle manufacturers were building specialty race-only models which placed guys like Tom at the forefront. Here Tom talks about his days as a Chrysler engineer, racing, and the Chrysler racing engine program.

May 12, 2004

Mopar: When did you begin your career at Chrysler?

Tom Hoover: 1955.

Mopar: I've been reading a lot about you and you seem to be billed as the godfather of the HEMI engine.

Tom Hoover: The 426.

Mopar: What was the first engine program you were assigned to?

Tom Hoover: The first major program that I got involved in was the adaptation of the Bendix Electrojector electronically managed individual cylinder port fuel injection system. It was released on the 1958 model year, L series.

Mopar: How did the Max Wedge engine program come about?

Tom Hoover: Well that was later and it came about after some very high-level management shuffling in 1960 or so. Mr. Townsend became President. He was an accountant and was involved in getting the company stabilized and sorted out. Luckily, he had a couple of teenage boys and his sons informed him straight away that the product he was offering for sale to the public had a serious image problem among young buyers. In those days the Pontiacs were getting most of the ink and of course, Chevrolet was involved in the high-performance racing, drag, street, and so on.

Basically Mr. Townsend issued a decree from on high that something needed to be done about this and quickly. I had already been involved at that point in one of the first successful passenger car engine race programs - the Hyper Pack for the Slant Six which was introduced in the compact Valiants in the 1960 model year. I did the engine development work for that package and it was very successful in NASCAR. In fact, we blew the Fords, Corvairs, and the Volvos totally into the weeds.

My view of it is that the engineering establishment at Chrysler at the time wasn't all that interested in racing. They felt it was a bit of a burden to take on the Max Wedge program that Mr. Townsend had in mind. Luckily, I just happened to be "standing there" so I was made the race program coordinator for the engineering division. Since I had considerable experience at the drags and we had completed the successful slant six program, we set out immediately with a blank change request signed by Mr. Townsend himself, and we set out to make a national drag racing performance package. I don't remember whether it was called a B-body at that point or not, but it was the mid-size Dodge and the mid-size Plymouth. I'm trying to think what they were called in those days, Belvedere? What was the Dodge? Coronet I guess. So we did, we began that program in earnest in October of 1961. The cars were available for sale in the spring of '62 as a '62 model. They were successful right off the bat. They would run 110 in the quarter or something close to that right off the showroom floor! The tires and the axle ratio and the skill of the driver would determine the elapsed time it would go at that speed. They became totally dominant in the racing year for 1963. In fact, they were undefeated. It was the car to buy if you wanted to do some acceleration trials. So, that was the Max Wedge story. I don't recall totally how many of those were built, maybe 4,000, in that range.

Mopar: In regards to the horsepower and torque how superior was the 426 Max Wedge compared to the Ford, Chevy, and Pontiac engines of the period?

Tom Hoover: Ford wasn't really competitive. So it isn't really worth talking about them. They had a 406 displacement six barrel that wasn't competitive. The Chevrolets had the 409 at the time and then by '63 everyone had gone to 426 or 427. Our advantage was the combination of the torque flight transmission and the broad torque range of our Max Wedge race B engine. The stock classes were required to run on tires that weren't allowed to be more than seven inches wide so that getting them launched for the first couple car lengths was a very tedious matter. By the time the '63 models were out we had come to the realization that the torque flight automatic did a good job helping to get the cars off the line and so the cars had no equal at the drags. In terms of what power level people really made, uh, I would guess the Cross Ram Wedges had more torque than the others. Certainly the Pontiac had equal power but less torque. Again, it was the combination of the engine and the transmission. The GM automatics simply weren't able to match the torque flight transmissions.

Mopar: Despite its success on the drag strip, why did the 426 Max Wedge fall short as a NASCAR engine?

Tom Hoover: It's fundamentally related to the cylinder head design. It's not that it was totally because it was a Wedge head but rather it was a matter of the Wedge head being located outboard on the cylinder bores which tended to shroud the valves. So, although we had a port area and good valve size they simply didn't flow the air that the Chevrolet and Pontiac Wedge engines did. Also, we joined NASCAR a little later in the game so we had to play some catch-up. As you suggest, the Wedge engines in NASCAR just weren't up to the task.

Mopar: Did the NASCAR program lead to the birth of the 426 HEMI in 1964?

Tom Hoover: Absolutely, it came down to us, to our level, in the form of a question. It was in the late winter, early spring of 1963 when the word came down, "what would it take to win Daytona Beach NASCAR in 1964?" The meeting was convened by Bill Roger, he was a vice president in engineering. Now whether or not he was the only vice president, I don't remember. There may have been a couple of vice presidents. We met in his office about, uh, I don't know 5 or 6 of us. Myself, a guy named Don Moore from the engine lab who was one of my hero's. He had been involved in the Indianapolis program, lets' see, production 331 displacement early HEMI's, back in the early 50's while I was off enjoying the pleasures of the Korean War. He and Bob Cahill were there and Bill Weertman, another colleague of long-standing in those days. Bill Roger posed the question, "what would it take to win Daytona Beach next December?" For high output and high air-flow configuration we knew the most about and had the most confidence in the HEMI. The last production year for the early HEMI had been 58'. We recommended in very sort order that we adapt the HEMI to the raised B engine. Jack Charipar and some of his people made a presentation then to the executive council shortly thereafter. We got the approval. So, beginning in April of 63' we set out straight-away to win Daytona Beach NASCAR race in February of 64', and we did with the 426 HEMI.

Mopar: How did the hemispherical head come about?

Tom Hoover: Oh, people had used the hemisphere head worldwide for quite a long time. Peugeot had one back early in the 20th century. Of course, in aircraft engine development, particularly in the states, HEMI's were on the old Pratt and Whitney and Wright radial military engines. It was Chrysler's project on a piston fighter airplane engine in the Second World War was a HEMI. So, there was background information available on that approach to things. That cylinder head had a reputation of rough running, and rough idle at low speeds and light loads if applied to passenger cars.

In spite of all that, when the horsepower race after the Second World War got going, as I said earlier I was in college and I was off at the Korean War at the time. Engineering went ahead and developed the HEMI and it was a satisfactory but slightly more expensive then the Wedge engines, passenger car engine. The ones I owned idled fine and ran fine under light loads. One of the rationales was that many of the decisions were made when the Korean War was a factor, and there was some concern about the quality of the fuel that would be available in North America during yet another war. So, to achieve the power goals of the first HEMI V8 series, I believe it was in the '51 model, they kept the compression ratio quite low to avoid requiring high-octane fuel, and took the volumetric efficiency advantages to get the power level that was required.

Later on, those engines were raised from 7.5:1 (where they began) up to 9, 9.5, and 10:1 compression so that they were really very good in the mid 50's for power. I won my class at the national drag's in 1960 with an early HEMI!

Mopar: When you mention your racing club, are you referring to the Ramchargers?

Tom Hoover: Yes.

Mopar: To verify, that was you, Dick Maxwell and Jim Thorton?

Tom Hoover: Well, in the very beginning it was me and Wayne Erickson who died after a clutch explosion and fire at the national drags in 1960. And probably Herb Moser and Dan Mancini were the others initially.

Thorton came along later. We formed the club in '58, so by the time Thorton got there, we had been going two years or so.

Mopar: When you say Dan Mancini, is he the gentleman that owns Mancini Racing?

Tom Hoover: No. It's the same family. A couple of Dan's brothers started Mancini Racing. Later, when they became quite elderly they sold it to some other people who still operate it using the name.

Mopar: During the Ramcharger days was there a "DIY" (Do It Yourself) ethic?

Tom Hoover: Oh, absolutely. Like I say, I had, well, I think I can say that with some conviction, the first multiple tuned length inlet manifold, (Ram) manifold, on my Plymouth. I used it to set the record and win the class in 1960. And of course, probably the first tuned ram manifold on a competition car was on the High and Mighty Ramcharger car. Danny Mancini and I built the first engine. There were several engines in that car over the course of three years or so. We built the first one, I think.

So, Ramchargers were a unique group in that, outside the military, seldom have I seen a band of brothers gather in that way to accomplish something. The Ramchargers really went through, I'd say, three stages. That is to say from '58 to '59 it was entirely casual. Everybody ran their own car. We just kind of gathered at the drag strip and so forth. The first community effort was the High and Mighty car.

Mopar: Tell me more about the High and Mighty car.

Tom Hoover: Well the guys, some of the enthusiasts and some of the guys at the museum and so forth are in the process (now) of building a clone of that car for display at a museum.

At the third stage we really got serious. That's when we approached Plymouth and Dodge and said gee, "Would you like us to run a stock car?" In the hope of advancing the sales of these cars to younger people. Plymouth told us to get lost, but Dodge said alright, and asked how much we would want? It became the Ramchargers Dodge at that point. Then we really did reduce the group to the equivalent of a band of brothers. You know, 8 or 10 people that were very serious about it.

Frank Wiley, he was the PR man at Dodge, he gave us a '61 two-door sedan. He had homologated a number of parts, like the engine and so forth. We built up the car, and took it to the nationals in '61 down at Indianapolis. Although we didn't win, we were down to the final four, and a Chrysler three-speed manual at the time had what were called pin-synchronizers. The synchronizer broke in the semi-final. A very significant thing happened then. The show seemed to have slowed down a little bit. Monday afternoon, Labor Day, the announcer said "Nicholson won that race in a 409 Chevy." The announcer asked the crowd, "How would you like to see that Dodge race Nicholson?" So they staged a match race and we won! And boy, Wiley took that, and the heat that it generated and ran with it. That had a lot too, I think it gave impetus to the Lynn Townsend edict, which was, "Hey let's do something with this, let's do something about our image here." The Max Wedge package was the result of that.

Mopar: Again, during the Ramcharger days, how was on-track research and development applied to the production of the Max Wedge and HEMI engine packages?

Tom Hoover: My job, particularly on the Wedge, was to simply take everything we knew and apply it to the raised 'B' (RB) engine. The 8 barrel cross ram and the bigger valves and so forth. Those cars were really neat, we moved the rear axle forward and all the little stuff you can do. When you have Mr. Townsend's support it's amazing how all the little roadblocks in engineering seem to disappear. The result was a really fantastic car. As I said earlier, when we got to '63, and put the aluminum nose on it, those cars just dominated stock car drag racing. The only real surprise I'd have to say was that the Torqueflite automatic was an advantage on the seven-inch-wide tire maximum size that we didn't really expect. So that was a surprise bonus.

Mopar: In 1964 the HEMI swept Daytona along with most major NHRA and AHRA events. Was the Chrysler Racing Group prepared for the repercussions from the racing sanctioning bodies?

Tom Hoover: No. Well, we kept going as hard as we could no matter what. They finally put us out of business in 1974. They just kept adding weight to the cars, basically until we simply couldn't swing it anymore. That's when we had to throw in the towel.

Mopar: Is this how the street HEMI came about in 1966?

Tom Hoover: Yeah, the various sanctioning bodies needed to, although it depended on which sanctioning body you were talking about. International Hot Rod Association allowed you to run anything you wanted to. But the others like NASCAR and NHRA needed to keep a lid on things to the extent that what we raced had to be available to the public, at least to a certain degree. I seriously doubt if there ever would have been a street HEMI had it not been for the requirement to have a certain minimum number of production cars with that basic engine configuration in them.

Mopar: Another interview that you participated in with Tom Condrin stated that you and Greg Charney would take some cars out and street race them. Is that true?

Tom Hoover: Oh Charney, yeah. Charney was one of the dynomometer operators. Some street racing did occur but it was with our own personal cars. I ran my street HEMI on occasion, which was a good car. It would run 117 track-speed at the drags on the street tires. It took a while for that to be surpassed.

Actually that whole thing escalated. The step beyond my car became the Silver Bullet. That was really our 440 four-barrel drag race test car. It was a new car in the '67 model year. In order to title it, and sell it to somebody you'd have to back up all the way to production in terms of the crash standards and all the various emissions compliance. It was too big a job to do that, so we managed to give it to Jimmy Addison as it was, along with a few other (laughs) enhancements.

Mopar: How do you feel about the new breed of racing going on; such as the import tuner type vehicles?

Tom Hoover: You mean like the little Hondas?

Mopar: Yes.

Tom Hoover: I really don't know much about it. I see the kids rocketing around with a, what do they call it, "fart can muffler." I think some of them learned quite a bit about super-charging and turbo-charging. The kids down here at the local college haven't figured out yet what they need to do with mixture level, but they're working on it. I'm glad to see there is still some enthusiasm going on. I thought when they built the last Camaro that that was the end of it, but it wasn't.

Mopar: Do you have any children or grandchildren involved with racing, or interested in cars?

Tom Hoover: No. Once I got into the locomotive business then, we'd go the Drags occasionally to see what was happening. My son has a '69 Charger A134 which is very, very nice, but it's not a race car. He's a field service manager for General Electric Locomotive, so we think about other kinds of engines a lot these days.

Mopar: Do you still go to any racing events?

Tom Hoover: I watch a NASCAR race now and again on TV. Occasionally, we go down to the Keystone Nationals; maybe every three years. I enjoy going down to the other end, and watching the diggers come through, and watch what we call 'A' cars run (like the old HEMI Darts and the Barracudas).

In fact, the Mopar guys invited me out to the Nationals last year, I was the honorary starter. Anyway, they had some 'A' automatics and I watched them race. I'm astounded that they are able to achieve that performance level. Of course, the tires are unlimited now. I've become friendly with Ray Barton and some of those guys, and drop in down at his place occasionally. You know, the record's 8.64! Back in the early days, that would have qualified you for top fuel dragster. That's astounding.

Mopar: Do you still own any cars?

Tom Hoover: Yeah, I have a '69 Barracuda and a '57 De Soto.

Mopar: What kind of engines are in those cars?

Tom Hoover: It is important to note that for the 15 years I was involved in everything, I conducted what we called the Racers Seminar Series every spring. The first one was in 1964, and the last one that I participated in was in 1979. We would do a dozen or so seminars every spring all around the country. We would try to hit the population centers, and we'd rent a conference room. For example, we'd do San Diego on Friday, and then we'd stay the weekend, and visit a few of the aftermarket suppliers on the coast.

Once the HEMI essentially got outlawed by 1973 or so, we realized that we had a challenge on our hands in terms of trying to get the word spread on what could be done with the small displacement 'A' engine; the 273, 318, 340, 360. Sox and Martin had a '69 Barracuda that had been sitting without an engine and transmission in their shop gathering dust. This was in mid '72. So, I bought it from them and I built an 'A' engine for it that would serve the purpose of being a guide for the lecture series, because I always did the engine stuff at the seminars and lectures.

It was kind of a Ramcharger type of thing. That is to say that we did hobby type activities that would compliment what we were trying to do for the Chrysler. In fact, the race program of the 1960s and early 1970s was probably the first example the platform approach, (which is horizontally organized), or the Dr. Fleming approach to doing business. A team effort that makes sure each of the guys involved develops an ownership for what he's doing.

I was always very proud of what we were able to accomplish in terms of cost to the company, and how many people it took to do it. The 426 HEMI program is a wonderful example of that. Extraordinary things would happen, with a small team, and not that much money.

Mopar/DaimlerChrysler Media

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