In the midst of the muscle car boom of the early 1960s, when it assembled a limited run of Max Wedge-powered Super Stock drag cars, little could the Chrysler Corporation’s heads have imagined that their creations would still be capturing the hearts and minds of young automotive enthusiasts six decades later.
But 62 years after it rolled off the assembly line on March 29, 1963, and was delivered to Harger Haldeman Dodge in Los Angeles, this 1963 Dodge 330 Max Wedge was still in action. Trevor Hawkins was rolling it into competition at Drag Week, and surrounded by later-model marvels, he wouldn’t have chosen to be in the seat of anything other than his original Dodge 330.
Hawkins’ Dodge 330 is a car with bones built in the heyday of dragstrip warfare—one of just 162 Max Wedge cars Dodge built that year, and one of only 56 high-compression versions with a manual transmission. This particular car? Just one of two in red with red interior, and it’s lived its entire life with one purpose.
That purpose hasn’t changed.
Originally sold to a young steelworker named Larry Stanley in California, the car was immediately put to use, racing across SoCal’s iconic drag strips with a tow bar setup that’s still welded on the frame today. Stanley eventually moved east to Arkansas to start a sawmill, bringing the Dodge with him. There, it was sold to Bill Langley of Langley Dodge in Blytheville, Arkansas. Langley and his trusted transmission builder, Ken Permenter lettered up the car and spent the next decade racing it relentlessly across the South at every drag strip they could drive to. “They said they were undefeated for a whole year. It was a serious car back then,” Trevor says.
By the mid-70s, though, the 330 was aging, and the team transitioned to a lighter A-body. Langley tried to give the 330 to Hawkins’ future mentor, Terry Sevener. “Terry helped them with their new Dart, and I found out later they offered the 330 to him for free. He wouldn’t take it without paying, so he gave them $100 for it and parked it,” Hawkins explains. And that’s where it sat, in a pole barn, untouched and unbothered for more than 40 years.
Trevor was a teenager when he met Terry. His family didn’t have the means to build or race cars, but Terry, an eccentric old hippie with a deep Rolodex of rare Mopars and decades of racing experience, took him in. “He taught me everything. Literally step-by-step, building engines and working on cars. He had a Superbird he let me drive to high school and a Dick Landy Pro Stock Challenger I raced. But this Max Wedge car…that was the one we always talked about getting out once I finished school.”
Unfortunately, Terry passed away in 2017 before that day ever came. His Max Wedge Dodge was sold to collector Ron Heberling. Trevor kept tabs on it. When he saw it listed for sale by Ron’s son Jesse in 2022, he didn’t hesitate. “I begged, stole, and borrowed to buy it. Dug into the couch cushions and put together everything I had. I wasn’t going to let it go.”
Though Ron and Jesse had revived the car to stock Max Wedge trim, Trevor knew racing on the original hardware wasn’t an option. “That stuff’s basically unobtanium,” he says. Instead, he swapped in a stout 505 cubic-inch wedge he built himself. It’s fed by an A&A cross ram intake with dual Edelbrock AVS2 650 carbs, sparked by an MSD Digital 7 box, and breathes through 2-1/8-inch TTI headers. Inside are CP-Carrillo pistons, Eagle H-beam rods, a Comp Cams solid roller camshaft with .625 lift. The CNC-ported Indy 440-1 heads are moving serious air at 375 CFM. It’s good for an easy 650–700 horsepower with the crossram, maybe 800 with a single-plane and Dominator setup. “It’s the rowdiest engine I’ve ever owned. It revs so fast it surprises you,” Trevor says.
He backed it with a McLeod RXT twin-disc clutch and 18-spline A833 four-speed he built with help from Brewer’s Performance. The rear is an 8.75 Mopar unit with Strange 35-spline axles, 4.11 gears, and a drag spool. Suspension is simple: factory control arms, Competition Engineering shocks, Mopar Super Stock springs. And, it still sports the original roll bar from the 1970s. “I’ve got pictures of it from back in the day. It’s the same cage,” Trevor adds. “It’s probably a little sketchy now, but I left it in for Drag Week.”
That debut didn’t go smoothly. “It was a mad thrash to get it ready. We didn’t even test it before heading to Ohio. On the first launch, the car revved so fast I dumped the clutch too early and wadded up the rear end,” Trevor recalls. The housing was a one-year-only part. Luckily, he found a replacement two and a half hours away and borrowed a shop from a local roofing company owner. “He just opened his doors. We welded brackets, swapped everything, and worked all night. That’s how Drag Week goes.” Fighting alignment and brake issues the rest of the week, Trevor tiptoed through the event running high 12s off-idle. “It was just about finishing.”
For a car that had sat dormant for four decades, just completing Drag Week was a triumph. But that was never the end goal. “I’ve competed in Drag Week several times with my own cars and co-piloting with other guys—the first thing I wanted to do with this car was Drag Week. But this car was always meant for Nostalgia Super Stock. That’s what Terry and I planned to do with it,” Trevor says. The plan now is to install a Dana 60, Strange disc brakes, and dial it in for 9-second passes. He’ll be racing with longtime friend Kevin Gass, and continuing the story that began in California six decades ago.
“It meant the world to me just to get the car. The first few months I had it, I’d go out and just sit in it, just taking it in and thinking how Terry would’ve been over the moon and so proud. There were a lot of people who were proud of me—I was the first person in my family to go to college, and I worked really hard, largely motivated by wanting to do something like race this car,” says the accomplished health law attorney. “It’s neat to take it to car shows, and older folks will come up and tell me they remember seeing it, and have stories of Ken and those guys racing it. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had with a car, and I haven’t even really started racing it yet. But it’s the first car I’ve ever owned that made me feel like I’m carrying a legacy.”
The original lettering still lives on its flanks. The paint—International Harvester Orange sprayed over the factory Ruby Red in the early 1970s—is untouched. Underneath the battle scars and dust, it’s a pure time capsule. And Trevor knows exactly what that means. “This car has a story, one I get to keep alive. The fact that I got it back and now get to race it, that’s the dream.”
