Collector Car Corner / Cars We Remember; No Plymouth superspeedway wins in 1962 and memories of the 413 Max Wedge muscle cars

By Greg Zyla —

Q: Greg, I enjoy your nostalgia columns on the muscle cars from the 1960 decade. A while back, you did your top 10 muscle cars, and if I remember correctly, you rated the 1962 Plymouth Savoy 413 extremely high as a true factory-produced race car. I remember they did great at the drag races, but not as much in NASCAR. Can you comment? Thanks, George C., Pottsville, Pa.  

A: George, thanks for your letter. In 1962, NASCAR held 53 sanctioned races, and Plymouth won 10 of them thanks to Richard Petty, who won 9, and Jim Pascal, who won one. Ford and Pontiac dominated that year, although Plymouth and Chevrolet held their own on the smaller tracks. It wasn’t until the last race of the year that Rex White won the Atlanta 400 for Chevy’s only 409 win on a superspeedway. Plymouth? Not one win on a superspeedway.

Here’s NASCAR’s breakdown of the 1962 schedule: 23 races on dirt tracks, 30 races on paved non-superspeedway tracks, 20 small short track races, and 10 superspeedway races. 

As for that 413 Plymouth Savoy you mentioned, yes, it was rated high atop my list of top muscle cars from Detroit. This 1962 effort by Chrysler Corporation also included the sibling Dodge Darts, which were mechanically identical. These muscle car gems arrived with factory-designed cast iron exhaust that was almost as good as a set of fender well headers. The factory exhaust included an exhaust “open/close” removable plug that the owner could unhook for instant open exhaust advantages. Among the leaders of the upcoming 1960s Detroit high-performance boom, the 413 wedge V8s could run low 13-second quarter miles right off the showroom floor. I had access to a ’62 Savoy 413 named “The Jolly Roger,” which sat across the street from my parents’ house on Arcadia Place in Vineland, N.J. 

Extremely popular with drag racers and street cruising enthusiasts, a few of the muscle car specifics included a unique cross-ram dual-quad intake manifold that boosted torque and horsepower by using long runners that tuned the airflow to the engine speed. Two 413 engines were available, featuring high-compression ratios of 11:1 or 13.5:1. Both require premium gas that allows all potential horsepower to be achieved. 

Also important were the lightweight build properties. The new Savoy/Dart unibody construction reduced weight compared to the previous body-on-frame design. Instantly a better handling car than the previous year’s examples, an enhanced suspension and heavy-duty drum brakes improved stopping power, but from firsthand experiences with my ’67 GTX, these drum brakes were at best just “so-so” stopping after a quarter-mile run.

As for looks, although the “in your face” Dodge Dart front end grew on me, the Plymouth Savoy was the better-looking sibling. The styling and interior were more of an afterthought and all business over style, thanks to the powerful 413 engines under the hood. Back then, you had two transmission choices: either a heavy-duty 3-speed manual or the more popular Torqueflite automatic, featuring a 3-speed that you shifted with buttons on the left side of the dash. Noteworthy is Chrysler figuring out how to get the automatics to work, which they did thanks to utilizing smaller converters used on the Slant-6 line of cars, beefed up of course to manage the power.

The overall result was low 13-second quarter miles, way faster than a 409 Chevy of the day. With a little super tuning, 12 second runs were the norm.

The 413 MOPARS weren’t cheap. The high price tag that put them out of reach for many Savoy/Dart buyers with the 13.5 compression 413 Max Wedge option came in at around $3,450, total. This cost was twice the cost of a Slant-6 base model Savoy, of which yours truly owned as my runaround car. Further, if you were cruising the avenues back then, the extremely low fuel economy made them highly impractical for daily driving, but that never stopped us youngsters from showing them off.

How much MPG did they get?

The 413 Max Wedge delivered 7-city and 12-highway, like the 409 Chevys and 406 Fords. This economic reality, even coupled with 30-cent per gallon fuel, resulted in many owners finding a large parking lot where we parked our beloved muscle cars to give them a low-speed break (our plugs fouled out quickly driving 30-MPH). It was at these parking lots or drive-in burger stands where street racing “call outs” were the norm and the big street race events were planned.

Further, the 413 Max Wedge engines back in 1962 were available in any Plymouth Savoy or Dodge Dart model, regardless of trim level or body style. This means if you needed a station wagon or a pickup that could beat a 409 Impala, Chrysler delivered.

In summary, the 1962 Plymouth Savoy and Dodge Dart with the 413 Max Wedge engines were ahead of the competition regarding what would become the biggest and most exciting decade in the history of the American muscle car.

(Greg Zyla is a syndicated auto columnist who welcomes reader interaction on collector cars, auto nostalgia and motorsports at extramile_2000@yahoo.com or Greg Zyla, Roosevelt Street, Sayre, Pa. 18840.)