That's all they had for the hemi or didn't know any different? I note that it has a direct and not progressive linkage. According to Dr. Google; 48s flow 175cfm and 97s flow 155cfm
If I had to guess, someone put that together just to mock it up and sell it and didn't have 6 carbs that matched. I'd have doubts that it was ever actually run with those specific 6 carbs on an engine. It almost looks like the 3 97's were positioned to show up best in that picture and maybe then the other 3 wouldn't be as noticeable as not-matching. Although if you had them in a zigzag pattern and all of the chambers were connected, I wonder if it would really matter? I'm not real sure how that intake looks inside.
That set-up looks to have been around a while. The person setting it up back in the old days probably was not even aware that there was a difference. I have an old x-1 set up similar to that one that came with 5- 97s and one 48.
The Jalopy Journal
