1971 Dodge Challenger: A Pace Car in the Photographers' Stand and a T/A That Never Came

The most famous 1971 Challenger never turned a racing lap. At the start of the 1971 Indianapolis 500, local Dodge dealer Eldon Palmer drove the Challenger convertible pace car down pit lane, by WISH-TV's account at more than 125 mph, with astronaut John Glenn, Speedway owner Tony Hulman and a broadcaster aboard. He lost control and the car plowed into a stand full of photographers. The station reports that 29 people were injured and no one was killed. For a pony car in its second season, already selling at a fraction of its first year's pace, it was an unforgettable and deeply unwelcome kind of publicity.^1,2

The explanations have never been tidy. WISH-TV's retrospective says Palmer's braking marker had been removed before the race, and that Palmer said he thought he needed to stay ahead of the race cars and misjudged how much track he needed to stop. The same report says the car had been delivered with drum brakes rather than the better disc brakes, and it identifies the pace car as a 383 four-barrel Challenger. Palmer was not held liable, and the station notes that race organizers afterward chose pace-car drivers with racing backgrounds. Dodge, meanwhile, had built 50 Hemi Orange convertible replicas of the car, according to its own heritage history.^1,2,3

The Challenger had arrived with a bang only a year earlier. Dodge's heritage history describes the 1970 car as an E-body sharing its platform with the Barracuda on a wheelbase two inches longer, offered in base, SE, R/T and T/A form with what Dodge called the greatest range of powertrains in the industry, from the Slant Six to the 426 Hemi. The T/A existed to meet SCCA homologation for Sam Posey's Trans-Am entry, and Hemi Challengers, the same history says, dominated Pro Stock drag racing in 1970 and 1971. Period trade tables in Chilton's Automotive Industries count 83,032 Challengers for 1970; Dodge's own history says just over 83,000.^2,4

For 1971 the Challenger narrowed. Dodge restyled the grille and taillamps, and its heritage release says EPA emission standards led to some powertrain changes, though the Hemi stayed on the list. The SE, the R/T convertible and the T/A were all gone. The R/T continued only as a hardtop, and the base line added a pillared two-door coupe, model JH21, below the hardtop and convertible. Over-Drive's production table lists base prices of $2,853 for the V8 coupe, $2,950 for the V8 hardtop, $3,207 for the V8 convertible and $3,273 for the R/T hardtop, a spread of only $420 from the cheapest V8 Challenger to the performance model.^2,5

The T/A's disappearance left a trace in Dodge's own advertising. The 1971 Scat Pack booklet still carried a full page for a Challenger T/A, and DodgeGarage's heritage retelling describes the pictured car as a Citron Yella example apparently photographed at the Chelsea Proving Grounds. It was not built for 1971. Over-Drive lists a revised set of 1971 specification sheets issued without the T/A and says the 340 Six Pack survived only as a separately sold engine assembly. The advertised car is therefore evidence of what Dodge planned and promoted, not of anything a dealer could deliver. The real T/A remained a 1970 car, of which DodgeGarage says 2,399 were sold.^6,5

The R/T itself kept its big-block menu. Over-Drive's engine table rates the standard 383 four-barrel at 300 horsepower at 4,800 rpm and 410 lb-ft at 3,400, the optional 440 Six Pack at 385 horsepower at 4,700 rpm and 490 lb-ft at 3,200, and the optional Hemi at 425 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 490 lb-ft at 4,000; the table does not say whether those are gross or net figures. Below them sat the 340 four-barrel at 275 horsepower and a two-barrel 383 at 275. A four-speed was available with the 340, 383, 440 and Hemi. The R/T rode on F70-14 tires, and the paint list still included Plum Crazy, Green Go, Hemi Orange and Citron Yella.⁵

Production fell hard. The same Chilton tables that count 83,032 Challengers for 1970 count 29,883 for 1971, and the 1973 Americana Annual agrees, so on the same accounting Dodge built about 36 percent as many Challengers in the second year as in the first. Over-Drive's table divides the 29,883 into 23,088 coupes and hardtops combined, 2,165 convertibles and 4,630 R/T hardtops. Peter Sessler's production table, however, prints a total of 26,299 and an R/T figure of 3,814, while Mike Mueller and Tom Glatch describe 4,630 as total R/T production including 3,907 domestic deliveries. Sessler's R/T number does not match that domestic count either, so the lower lineage remains unexplained.^4,7,5,8,9

What those totals cannot yet say is how many 1971 Challengers carried each engine. None of the production tables divides the 1971 cars by engine or transmission, so the number of Hemi, Six Pack and 340 cars stays unknown rather than estimated. The convertible count raises its own question: Dodge says it built 50 pace-car replica convertibles, but no source states whether they sit inside Over-Drive's 2,165 convertible figure. Sessler's split of the convertibles into 83 sixes and 1,774 V8s belongs to his lower lineage and cannot simply be subtracted from the higher one. Even the rarest 1971 Challengers have to wait for a better ledger.^5,3,8

On the drag strip, 1971 was the Hemi's last season on equal terms in Pro Stock. NHRA's retrospective records that Ronnie Sox won six of the eight events and still lost the championship: Rod Shop Dodge team driver Mike Fons beat the Sox & Martin team car of Herb McCandless in the World Finals, 10.05 seconds to 10.40, to take the title. NHRA then adopted a weight-break policy for 1972 that made Hemi-headed cars carry 7.25 pounds per cubic inch, against 6.75 for inline-valve wedges. In NHRA's words, the Mopars lost their performance advantage, and in 1972 Chevrolet won seven of the eight events.¹⁰

The 1971 Challenger is therefore a car of subtractions. It lost the SE, the R/T convertible and the T/A; it lost more than 53,000 units of annual volume; and it lost the Trans-Am homologation reason that had produced its most specialized version. What remained was an honest menu, from a Slant Six coupe to a Hemi R/T, sold for a year in which a Dodge dealer put the most visible Challenger of all into a photographers' stand at Indianapolis. The car's reputation today rests largely on its first season, but the 1971 production figures make the second one the scarcer and in some ways the more revealing year.^2,4,5,1