1963 Dodge 330 Max Wedge

This car, Lot 242, sold for $110,000, including buyer’s premium, at RM Sotheby’s auction in Phoenix, AZ, on January 20, 2017.

The early 1960s saw tremendous popularity in drag racing, with every automaker looking to win NHRA titles in the factory stock classes. The competition to put muscle on the strip led to some rather special factory production cars, and Mopar had the advantage in that era.

In 1962, both the Plymouth Belvedere and the Dodge 330 could be ordered with a 413-cubic-inch engine hopped up with a cringe-inducing 13.5:1 compression ratio. The “Max Wedge” engine, as it was called in ’62, produced 420 horsepower from its wedge-shaped combustion chambers.

As 1963 approached, the NHRA decided to limit displacement to 427.2 cubic inches in the classes where factory hot rods were competing. It’s no coincidence that the Ford 427 and the Mopar 426 both arrived for ’63 in special factory lightweight editions of eligible cars. GM was kind of there, too, with the Chevy 409 and Pontiac 421, but the word had come down that GM was out of the racing business, so further development was quashed for a time.

What is a Max Wedge?

The most humble Dodge 330 2-door sedan came with a 225 Slant 6 for $2,245, or you could get your choice of 318-, 361-, or 383-ci V8 engines starting at $2,352. The car came with four-wheel drum brakes. A 3-speed manual column-shift transmission was standard, or you could get the 3-speed TorqueFlite automatic for $211 extra. Front suspension was by torsion bar, with leaf springs and a solid rear axle in the back.

The 330 with the Max Wedge engine was always a special car, but even with the twin-carb 426, you could buy the sane model or the all-out drag racing rig. If you ordered sales code 08 with your 330, you got a base trim car with your choice of transmission, plus a twin-carb Stage II 426 engine squeezing at 11:1 compression and rated at 415 horsepower. That option cost you an extra $445 above the base price.

But if you wanted the real deal, you had to specify sales code 09. That got you the Stage III 426 with two carbs at 13.5:1 compression. It was rated at 425 horsepower and 480 pound-feet of torque. The engine internals were beefed up, and you got a big, nasty 320-degree cam with the package. Similarly, the car could be fitted with lightweight aluminum front bodywork. Each came with absolutely minimal interior, and the battery was moved to the trunk to assist in weight transfer over the rear wheels. With this car in this configuration, you could run the quarter-mile in the low 12s at about 116 mph. This was the weapon you bought to go win yourself a Wally.

However, the factory lightweight Dodge 330 was not a car you could race on Sunday and drive to work on Monday. At least not if you wanted to hide your racing from your boss, your wife, or anyone else on the road. The Max Wedge came with a special free-flowing exhaust and was not known for being manageable on the street.

Dodge’s own factory service bulletins on the Max Wedge tell the tale:

“The long-duration camshaft provides maximum high-speed output; however, it causes a rough idle operation and lazy low-speed response. The gas mileage of a conventional car cannot be expected.” Further, the tech bulletins warned, “Wide-open throttle bursts must be limited to 15 seconds to prevent engine damage.”

Buying a Max Wedge

If you read the auction ads for these cars today, a lot of low production numbers are claimed. Most agree that 34 cars were made with the 425-hp engine and lightweight bodies, including both automatic and manual transmissions, and fewer than 200 were made with the 415-hp engine and steel bodies.

When you’re considering any muscle car, you have to look closely at the history of the specific car in question. A lot of engines got blown up on the strip, or were replaced with the 426 Hemi that came out in 1964. You could also take those lightweight parts and put them on any 330 or Belvedere you wanted. So documentation is critical if you want to be sure you’ve got the real deal.

Looking at this sale, the car appears to be genuine, right down to the el cheapo steel wheels and base-model hubcaps. The VIN and fender tag are correct for the year and model. The car shows well and the engine bay is so clean you’ll wear gloves to protect the engine from your hands — not the other way around.

That’s why this car sold for good money at $110,000. If you look at auction results over the past few years, you’ll see that some cars turn up multiple times in search of a big price and fail to sell. You can also find several that have been modified for racing, which pulls the price down. Then there are the replicas selling for lower money yet.

You can find higher bids than this sale price, too, back in the muscle car bubble days of 2005 to 2007, when some sellers walked away from bids as high as $200,000 for examples like this. But in today’s market, for a really clean example of an important muscle car, this is fair money. Both the buyer and seller should be happy with the deal.

(Introductory description courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.)