Shut Down!

Great Cars of Song: Shut Down

Muscle cars were made for one thing and one thing only: Beating the other guy down the strip. (Okay, maybe two things: impressing the chicks, but that's for another post blog). Although drag racing and hot rodding started earlier, the 1960s were, arguably, the heyday of street racing. Rock and roll went hand in hand with the youth culture that muscle cars and hot rods embodied, and many a song was devoted to the thrill and danger of street racing: Dead Man's Curve by Jan and Dean, GTO by Ronny and the Daytonas, and Hot Rod Race by Jimmy Dolan.

Ah, but nothing seems to catch that whole 1960s fun and sun and cruising the strip zeitgeist like the Beach Boys. Sun, sand, surfin' ... and racing. They did a lot of songs about cars -- Little Deuce Coupe, 409--but Shut Down is my favorite. Not being a product of the '60s (other than being born early in the decade), I came to this song later on, probably in the late '70s when my sister finally moved out and I had my own room and could listen to whatever music I wanted to without bugging my older brother. I'd sit in my room and play the dickens out of Endless Summer and, errr, well, with my feet up on my desk doing physics and chemistry homework, but that's another and altogether boring story (nerd alert!).To a Wisconsin teenager, all of that surfin' safari stuff seemed like paradise.

At the time, I had only a vague idea what "409s" and "Deuce Coupes" were, let alone the function of a "competition clutch" or a "powershift", but I still loved the song. I imagined the "413" to be some random box-shaped car, probably black, and driven by anonymous thugs, in contrast to the hot Corvette driven by the young, hip surfing hero. At the time I more or less identified with the protagonist driving the Corvette and saw the "413" as the big baddie that the hot little sports car would vanquish in mortal combat. Man, I must have listened to that song a hundred times, dreaming of cruising around in a hot car and attracting all those California Girls ... and then proceeding to drive and utterly adore a 4-door AMC Hornet for several years. Go figure.

But, as with the Red Barchetta, I can now look back on that old song and find out exactly what was going on and see if the reality matches up with what my adolescent imagination conjured up. So slap on a pair of baggies and huarachi sandals, comb up your bushy bushy blonde hairdo (if you still can), and let's meet up down on the strip where the road is wide (how many song lyrics can I work into this post?).

It happened on the strip where the road is wide
Two cool shorts standing side-by-side
Yeah, my fuel-injected Sting Ray and a 413,
We're revvin' up our engines and it sounds real mean

The song itself was released in 1963 on the Surfin' USA album (the image above comes from the 1964 album of the same name) and tells the story of a drag race between a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray and a 1962 Super Stock Dodge Dart with a 413 Max Wedge engine (yes, your humble correspondent is actually writing a post about the Dart). The "shorts" referred to above were slang for hot rod, wheels, etc., and may have been a regional west coast term, but it may also have referred to the relatively short wheelbases of the cars in question. At any rate, they're meeting up for a *gasp!* illegal street race. [insert obligatory anti-street racing message here]

Declining numbers at an even rate
At the count of one we both accelerate
My Sting Ray's light, the slicks are startin' to spin,
But the 413's really diggin' in
(Gotta be cool now, power-shift, here we go...)

The 413 came out of Chrysler's "B" line of big-block V-8s, and got the name "Max Wedge" from the wedge-shaped combustion chambers, sometimes also called "semi-hemis". In 1959, Chrysler introduced the "RB" (Raised-Block) line of big-block V-8s that had slightly longer strokes than the original Bs. The cylinders on either side were fed by 4-barrel carbs that sat on the opposite side of the engine. Chrysler engineers tuned the intake manifolds to the engine and then bent them around so they would fit under the hood of a production car -- all to satisfy racing regulations requiring stock availability. Chrysler called this "tuning" of the manifolds Ram Induction and it functioned the same way as a supercharger by dumping more air into the fuel mixture; it's also based on the same principles that govern the design of ported base and passive radiators in stereo speakers (see, all that physics came in handy).

The 413 was originally only available on Chrysler's big luxury models, but in 1961 it found its way into some of the smaller models including the newly redesigned (and smaller) Dodge Dart. Some say the styling of the new Darts was something only a mother could love and they have a point: they're kinda weird-looking. But on the positive side, they lost 2 inches of wheelbase and considerable weight and a stripped-down version cost only around $2900. One could reasonably argue that this has priority over the GTO as the first true muscle car: a cheaper model with few options but outfitted with massive power. And at 420 horsepower, it had plenty of power.

The other car in the race is a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray, which was completely redesigned for 1963 and an instant hit with its distinctive styling and really world-class performance. It had a 327 Rochester fuel-injected engine (optional) and although this wasn't the first fuel-injected engine offered on the 'Vette--it debuted in mid-1957--the horsepower had significantly increased to 360 horsepower. Otherwise, well heck, what else is there to say about it, it was a great car and remains a classic (though some of us rather prefer the '62).

The Super Stock Dodge is windin' out in low, but
My fuel-injected Stingray's really startin' to go
To get the traction, I'm-a-ridin' the clutch,
My pressure plate's burning, that machine's too much!
The 413 had great low-end torque and would probably have had the jump on the Corvette. Oddly, there doesn't seem to have been that great of a weight difference between the two cars, both about 3200 pounds (see here for the Dodge).

Pedals to the floor, hear his dual quads drink
And now the 413's lead is startin' to shrink
He's hot with Ram Induction™ but it's understood
I got a fuel injected engine sittin' under my hood
(Shut it off, shut it off, buddy now I shut you down)

And so, the Corvette wins and our hero can get back to the beach, wax down his surf board, plan out a route, and head down Doheny way to check out the girls on the beach. Did it really happen? Who knows. Could it have happened? Sure. Would the result be the same? Ah, well, that's an interesting question. Given the similar weights of the cars, my back-of-the-spreadsheet calculations (physics again) give power/weight ratios of 0.13 for the Dodge and 0.11 for the 'Vette, so I suppose on that measure you'd have to give the advantage to the Dodge. Yeah, that's not the only measure of importance, but that's about all we've got to go on.

But wait, there's more! As luck would have it, the 1990 issue of High Performance Mopar magazine put a Max Wedge Dart against a '64 Corvette to settle the question once and for all. An earlier race by the National Muscle Car Association had the Dodge beating a '63 "fuelie", and to uphold Chevy's honor another 'Vette driver wanted to have a go at the Dodge. His '64 had slightly more power (375 bhp) than the '63 in the song and actually won the first race by a couple tenths of a second. . .but then lost the next three in a row, by pretty good margins. So at least the empirical record suggests the song was a bit overly optimistic.

When I was younger I rooted for the Sting Ray, whether it was out of a sense of wanting to be on the winning side or my young mind just plain thought the Corvette was cooler. Nowadays, I tend to favor the 413, an otherwise ugly duckling of a car that was turned into a fire-breathing ugly swan of a car. That and I now kind of imagine the 413 being driven by a displaced midwesterner come out to the Golden State to show those surfer boys what's what. My inner sense of balance, however, likes the idea of one being the eternal winner in song while the other takes it on the track years later.

--Anthony J. Cagle
http://www.carlustblog.com/2010/04/great-cars-of-song-shut-down.html