Being an owner of both the original 426 as well as two 5.7 equipped vehicles I had the same question posed to me many times. It is true, the 5.7 & 6.1 pistons look nothing like the 50's-70's era hemis. They are true hemis in the dome shaped piston, arrangement of the valves in the cylinder as well as plug location. Chrysler frankly defined hemi heads even though they were not the first to design it, they perfected it.

The 5.7 and 6.1 to me can be argued (as above) the evolution of the hemi...in my opinion. The older hemis were having great difficulty passing the 1970 era emissions...imagine now??? The valvetrain looks quite similar and the geometry of the design is obvious. The pistons are probably the major point for the naysayers as they are essentially flat tops, not domes.

To me, I'm quite glad an American-owned company (for now), called Chrysler is producing a "hemi" for the modern era. End of story for me...IMO