With 440 cubic inches and nearly 500 lb-ft of torque, the Dodge 440 Magnum V8 was a leading player on the ’60s muscle car scene.

As we often ask at Mac’s Motor City Garage, what’s in a name? In the case of the Dodge 440 Magnum V8, that great engine of the ’60s muscle era, some part of its fame might come down to the cool name. We don’t know what inspired it—a champagne bottle, the Remington.44 Magnum handgun cartridge—but the name had instant cachet. At Chrysler Corporation, Plymouth offered the very same V8 as the Super Commando 440, while Chrysler’s version was the TNT 440. All three engines were identical except for the air cleaner label, but Magnum was the name that stuck.

The Magnum story begins, really, with Chrysler’s first corporate-wide V8, the B-series introduced in 1958. The new engine was initially offered in modest 350 and 361 cubic-inch displacements, but its 4.80-in bore spacing and 9.98-in deck height allowed room for expansion. In 1959 a tell-deck version (10.725-in) known as the RB (Raised Block) came online, enabling a displacement of 413 cubic inches in ’59 and 426 CID in ’63. For ’66, the bore was opened up to 4.32 inches, the biggest yet, and with a stroke of 3.75 inches, that added up to 440 cubic inches—one of the largest V8s in the Motor City at the time. Only the Lincoln MEL V8 was larger at 462 CID.

In ’66 base form the 440 CID V8 was rated at 350 hp, but Chrysler engineers soon developed an improved intake port that was adopted across the board for ’67. Output ratings remained unchanged, however. Meanwhile, while working up an HP (high performance) version of the 440—soon to become the Magnum—they discovered that the big V8 also responded to increased exhaust flow in a big way. Exhaust valve diameters were increased from 1.60-in to 1.74-in, while the cam timing was optimized  to exploit the potential. When the ’67 Magnum V8 was introduced, the advertised cam specs were as follows: Valve lift .450-in intake, .467-in exhaust; intake duration 268 degrees, exhaust duration 284 degrees; 46 degrees of overlap.

With a conservative 10.0:1 compression ratio and a single Carter AFB four-barrel carburetor, the Magnum was rated at 375 hp at 4,600 rpm, and even more interesting, 480 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm. With all that torque, the Magnum was one of the hottest performers on the muscle car scene out of the box. The 440 Magnum was standard equipment on the ’67 Dodge Coronet R/T and optional on some other Dodges, while at Plymouth the HP 440 was standard on the GTX, though here it was labeled the Super Commando 440, of course. In magazine testing of the day, 14-second quarter-mile times were the norm, and there were even some 13-second e.t.s with a little on-site tuning.

Through its years of production, the 440 Magnum V8 continued to evolve. In ’68 the original closed-chamber cylinder heads were exchanged for a 90 cc open-chamber design, while the standard 440 CID V8s received the Magnum’s larger exhaust valves, too. Magnum camshafts continually changed as well (or at least their published specs, anyway), and some Magnums sported dual-point distributors. When the compression ratio was reduced to 8.2:1 in 1972, the Magnum name was dropped from the 440 CID V8 as well. But in the coming years, Chrysler continued to get mileage from the Magnum brand, including on a small-block engine family, a personal-luxury coupe, and in the 21st century, a station wagon.