Why Chrysler waited six years to enter the pony car competition from the 1960s will always be a mystery in the world of automobiles. Ironically, two weeks before Ford’s official horse-branded Mustang gave the new vehicle breed its name, popularity, and fame, Mopar set the trend with the Barracuda on April Fool’s Day in 1964. Chrysler, however, pulled off a double bluff in 1970 that would checkmate the market once more and leave a pair of legendary inventions to reverberate through time. That comeback was led by the recently born Challenger, who was supported by the restyled veteran Barracuda.
Chrysler wasn’t a stranger to the muscle car (and horsepower) wars of the late sixties – the Charger, Coronet, Road Runner, GTX, and other Mopars were open-carry big-block-slinging marauders that were more than eager to take on the GTOs, Camaros, Gran Sports, 442, Mustangs, or Cougars of the day.
Strangely, Chrysler had all the big guns to take the fight to the other Two Big from Detroit, but it was completely absent from the big-brawned pony car field. To make matters even more of a proverbial Gordian knot reincarnation, the Barracuda fell on the wrong side of history by debuting a new style but not capitalizing on it. In 1970, things took a U-turn of massive scale, with Mother Mopar unleashing not one but two weapons upon the United States of Automobile: Dodge’s new challenger to everyone else – cleverly baptized ‘Challenger’ – and the reconstructed Barracuda. The two cars were peas-in-a-pod lookalikes but shared zero sheet metal.
Announced on September 25, 1969 – exactly 54 years ago – the Dodge Challenger was the bigger of the twin cousins, with a two-inch (five centimeters) longer wheelbase than its fishy sibling. But the secret weapon these ruffians kept in hiding was the engine bay. The cavernous volume had been designed to house every single Chrysler engine available for passenger cars, from the measly 198-cubic-inch (3.2-liter) slant six all the way up to the behemoth, the 440-cube (7.2-liter) Raised Block V8.
The Challenger seized the attention right once, selling more than 50% more units than the Barracuda (the Dodge sold about 77,000 vehicles compared to the Plymouth’s little less than 49,000). The classic full-size B-body Mopar reported a decline of about 40,000 cars compared to the 1969 output, from 85,680 to 46,315, and summoned a storm so fierce it even cannibalized its own family, cutting the Charger’s sales momentum in half.
Three trim levels and two body types (hardtop and convertible) comprised the Challenger’s long-hood, short-deck personality. The standard Challenger, the Special Edition (SE), and the Road/Track Scat Pack member were the three options for equipment. Note: Dodge offered to combine the SE and R/T options in the Challenger. In the first year, 56,000 units of the standard model were produced, with 18,512 units of the R/T doing well as well. (Second note: The Challenger T/A was a race-homologation production that allowed the Challenger to compete in SCCA-approved Trans-American events.) There was also a third distinct type.
Only 3,884 Challengers came in the ragtop version, with 963 branded with the Road/Track performance letters. Being a high-performance model, the R/Ts only brought big-block muscle to choose three distinct plants with four output specs. The entry V8 was the tried and tested 383 CID (6.3-liter) with a single four-venturi carb, and the King (Kong) of the hill was the 426 Street HEMI that only a handful of Challengers received (296, to be exact, with just nine ‘verts).
The 440-6 convertible comes in second on our impromptu list of a unique body design to engine pairing: 99 Dodge Challenger vehicles from 1970 had this form. Due to their low production, they are among the most sought-after items on the market right now, with original survivors turning up roughly as frequently as February 29.
The replacement for the unaltered factory-built Challengers with a cloth roof is a restoration vehicle, like the one shown in the video below, which lacks the powertrain that was installed on December 12, 1969, at the Hamtramck facility. The vehicle was revealed to be a 440 six-barrel High Performance Mopar with a heavy-duty TorqueFlite three-speed transmission and a 4.10 Dana 60 rear axle.
The seller doesn’t tell much about the car’s history, except that it’s a frame-off restoration performed in 2000. True to the build sheet, the vehicle sports a date-correct big-block with a trio of dual-throats atop the high-rise manifold. The automatic – again, non-matching numbers – sits behind the 390 hp and 490 lb-ft (395 PS, 664 Nm) of Mopar muscle.
The three-speed transmission was fitted on 38 of the 99 Six-Packs from the Challenger’s first brood, and this particular example also received the Bright Red livery, identical to the one applied in the last month of 1969. As a performance model, it didn’t come with air conditioning, but it has power brakes, steering, and a power top.