Originally Posted by eljefino
Originally Posted by Jarlaxle
Originally Posted by spasm3
Engine bay looks too small for a hemi swap.
It is...that's an early "narrow" A-body. Even a small-block is tight.
Yeah I'm digging the mish-mosh of square and swoopy. It's like the side windows can only be flat, or they didn't have the budget or tech to make them bubbly like the front and back glass.
You're closer than you realize: they DIDN'T have the budget for it. The first A-body with curved side glass was the 1970 Duster...and it was quite a struggle to fit it in the doors. The A-bodies HAD to meet the price point, to compete against Ford (Falcon), Chevy (II), Rambler (American), and increasingly, VW. The car was an enormous-and in many ways, revolutionary-design in 1960. (Chrysler pretty much bet the company on it.)
Notably, the 1960 Valiant was the first mass-produced car in the country with an alternator.