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Best Of BS: How Three Dual Quad Hemis Have Killed Hundreds Of Cars Over The Last 40 Years


Best Of BS: How Three Dual Quad Hemis Have Killed Hundreds Of Cars Over The Last 40 Years

I may write lots of headlines that are on the sensational side, but this title is one hundred percent true. The three Chrysler Hemi engines you see in the photo above and below have violently killed hundreds, maybe thousands of cars since the early 1970s and two of the three are still at it every day…even today. The good news is that their automotive murders have helped save countless lives and limbs. What the hell does all of this mean? Read on to discover the story of the murderous Hemis that have helped humanity.

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The Calspan Corporation is located in Buffalo, New York and is one of the premier automotive and aerospace safety companies in the world. The company began life as Cornell Aeronautical Lab and was eventually spun off into Calspan. As pioneers in the field of automotive crash research and its documentation, Calspan needed something to keep themselves at the forefront of that industry in the early 1970s. What they came up with would change the course of automotive history, but it required horsepower…and lots of it.

Calspan engineers had come up with an idea that would advance crash testing well beyond the limits of crashing a single car into a fixed object in the form of a wall, another car, or guardrail, etc. The wanted to recreate real world accidents with moving cars and different angles among other situations. They devised a pulley and tow system using steel cables to propel the cars and called up Chrysler to order up all the horsepower that they needed to move the driverless vehicles. That call netted the lab three solid lifter, dual quad, top of the heap Hemi engines that would provide the last piece of their puzzle.

The engines were installed in an interesting manner. As you can see below, one engine sits by itself while two engines are installed front to back and linked together. You can also see the two Torqueflite transmissions which passed the power from the crankshafts to the driveshafts and ultimately onto the winches which pulled the cables and moved the cars. We’ve tried like hell to dig up as much info on these things as we could but the best we can figure is that the two engines hooked together were used to get the cars moving while the third was used to actually maintain their speed once it was achieved. There had to be some sort of rudimentary computer that controlled the speed of the vehicles as a human controlling the throttle wouldn’t be completely accurate. Taking another stab, we’re going to guess that a big transmission from a truck or piece of heavy equipment was used to hook all three engines together and that a truck or heavy equipment rear end was used to spool the reel of cable. Those were pieces readily available a the time this was built and were certainly strong enough to handle the loads.

Amazingly, two of the engines are still powering test crashes today at Calspan…or so we have been told. We’re going to contact them and try to visit the place for a follow up story…and maybe even see those two angry elephants wreck some cars like they have been doing for the last four decades in the name of making the cars and trucks we drive safer.

Is that cool or what?

Consider this a teaser. We’re working on bringing your the full, long form story regarding three engines that have killed more cars than any others before or since!


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8 thoughts on “Best Of BS: How Three Dual Quad Hemis Have Killed Hundreds Of Cars Over The Last 40 Years

  1. Chevy Hatin' Mad Geordie

    What a waste of fine Hemis!

    Couldn’t they have used Chevy motors and put those Hemis to better use like in a ‘Cuda Super Stocker or something like that…

  2. Bob J

    I’d have to agree with Gordie. It seems a waste of what appears to be Gen II Hemis in good condition for this task. I stress apparently as we don’t really know the status (wear) of those engines. Even at that, I wonder if these engines are in some way specialized Industrial versions (I recall that there were 354 Gen I Hemis that were built as industrial versions). Additionally, there’re much larger displacement versions of any of the big III engines (514 to 632 CI) that would be better suited IMHO for such work.

    It’s still a neat artifact from an earlier time, and probably made sense at the time due to their HP ratings. It’s certainly worth a follow-up story and it’d likely be best if it happened sooner rather than later as the people who were tasked with the acquisition and installation are retiring, retired or no longer with us. The decisions and rationale will be lost.

    Just random thoughts

  3. HotRodPop

    Leave it ti Geordie, and Bob J is a little off the mark, too. These guys are scientists, not car guys, so they’re not concerned with historical muscle engines, only the forces they were capable of producing at the time, and, face it: the Hemi was without compare! I do agree that the story needs to be persued rigorously, as the main characters will have already left this mortal coil, or will in the not-too-distant future. It would be fascinating to read of the millions of lives this musclecar motor has helped save over the decades, not to mention a testimonial to the way we used to do it here in ‘Merica!

    1. bob j

      Hi HRP,

      I would contend that it was Engineers, not Scientists that were the driving (no pun intended) force behind the acquisition and installation of the engines for the purpose used. No doubt scientists would’ve been involved in the data analysis, but I’m skeptical of their relevance to the creation of the final data sets. I would estimate that these engines were selected based on a classic waterfall requirements methodology.

      I will look forward to a more in-depth article

      Best – Bob J

  4. HotRodPop

    I bow to you, Bob, I was in too much of a hurry with my post, but, my aim was at Geordie, and I still don’t think these guys were car guys nor were they concerned with the almighty Hemi or what happened to it in their experiments. And, “requirements methodology” is with out a doubt correct, because at the time, the Hemi was a monster out of the box and had no equal without extensive reworking. I, like yourself, look forward to more detail. I just can’t let this go!

  5. Mark Saba II

    You also have to think that in the early 70s, as said in the article, no one cared that these hunks of iron may one day become collectible. The engineers probably had a horsepower number they knew they needed to be at and the suits probably had a budget they needed to be under. I feel like they probably had options presented to them and the Hemi fit the bill. I think it is cool they are still using 2 of them as electric motors or even a hydraulic system could probably be used more efficiently these days. I do wonder what happened to the third though.

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