Why they call the Hemi 'The Elephant'

[hatersaurusrex]

As far as I can tell, noone truly knows where the 426 Hemi got the 'elephant' nickname.  But if you look of this shot of an Aston Martin Hemi from Wikipedia, you can certainly see a strong resemblance to an Elephant head from the front.   Maybe Chrysler got their inspiration from 'over the pond'?

[1974dodgecharger]

Muscle cars tv show talks about this essentially heavy and big just how u described the pic.  Goes into further detail also....

[Cooter]

Becasue everybody knows that an elephant is scared of a mouse.

[JB400]

My guess, it's because of its size. The Hemi weighs a bunch.  An elephant weighs a bunch.  The Hemi is big.  An elephant is the largest land animal alive today.  I say it's naturally fits.

[John_Kunkel]

Yeah, it's a size thing. GM started the "animal name game" with the Porcupine, Rat, Mouse so the rather rotund 426 Hemi got the Elephant moniker. The early Hemi owners were jealous so they got called Whale.

[DC_1]

I remember reading somewhere the engine designer called it the Elephant Motor because it was big and powerful.

[Ghoste]

Tom Hoover is still around, if someone on here knows him, they could ask him about that.   Early Chrysler advertising called it King Kong in a couple of ads, I always thought it was the racers or a magazine hack who gave it the iron elephant tag.