Toyota Hemi Engine: 60 Years of History

When you think of a hemi engine, it’s almost certainly one of Chrysler’s‌ legendary HEMI V8s that‍ comes ​to mind ‍first. ‍Depending on your age, it might be one of the classic HEMI ‍variants⁢ from the ’50s and ’60s, or the contemporary variant ⁣used in modern Dodge muscle cars and RAM pickup trucks. But a lot of enthusiasts likely know that Chrysler was not the only car company to build engines⁤ with ‍hemispherical combustion chambers.

Even though they⁤ were​ never ⁤produced in large‍ numbers, both Ford and Chevrolet experimented with ‌their own hemispherical head designs while building racing engines in the 1960s. And⁣ what might seem even crazier is that at​ the same time, on the other ⁤side of ​the planet, Toyota was rolling ⁤out ⁣brand new cars with its own hemi V8s onto the streets of Japan.

You’d be ‌forgiven if you don’t know about Toyota’s 1960s hemi, though, because, unlike so many other Toyota engines, this one‍ wasn’t designed to take over the world through its export markets. Instead,this old-school Toyota V8 was designed ‌specifically for high-end luxury sedans in the Japanese​ domestic market,namely ‌the Toyota‍ Century. ​The company kept building these V8s all the way through the 1990s, too, decades after Chrysler had stopped producing its original HEMI engine. Toyota would also use similar​ hemispherical ‌combustion chambers on smaller engines,which would become much more familiar to ‌enthusiasts around the world.

1964 was a big year for Japan.​ It was the year‍ of the​ Tokyo Olympics, as ⁤well as the year ‌that the country’s state-of-the-art Shinkansen bullet train started running. Japan’s first mass-produced V8 engine, the ⁢Toyota V-series, also debuted in ‍1964, designed for the upscale Crown Eight luxury ⁤sedan. While Toyota making​ its own V8 engine was already a significant achievement, what made this all-aluminum⁤ 2.6-liter, overhead-valve V8 even more