1970 Dodge Charger: 200 MPH at Talladega, Half the Sales at Home

On March 24, 1970, Buddy Baker took a blue Dodge onto the Alabama International Motor Speedway at Talladega and, on his 34th lap, went around at 200.447 mph. The NASCAR Hall of Fame's account of the day records that NASCAR inspected the car for legality beforehand, that chief timer and scorer Joe Epton brought timing equipment from Atlanta, that Bill France was there to watch, and that Dodge engineers had been tuning the car throughout the test. It was the first officially timed lap above 200 mph on a closed course. Afterward Baker called it ‘the best feeling I've had in a long, long time.’ Dodge's heritage history records him as the first to top 200 mph behind the wheel of a Hemi-powered Charger.^1,2,3

The car was not a showroom Daytona, and its history says a good deal about how the aero program worked. The Hall of Fame identifies it as Chrysler development car DC-93, which began life as a 1969 Charger 500 used as a magazine test car on the West Coast. It was stolen, stripped and found on blocks in Los Angeles, then rebuilt by Nichels Engineering as a NASCAR research-and-development car and fitted with the Daytona's nose and rear wing, and a 426 Hemi. Bobby Allison, Bobby Isaac, Dan Gurney, Paul Goldsmith and Charlie Glotzbach had all driven the chassis before Baker. The 200-mph Charger was an engineering test car built from a recovered street car, which is about as far from a dealer's order form as a Charger could get.¹

The Charger a customer could order that spring looked different from the 1969 car in the details. Dodge's heritage history describes a full-width single grille opening with a scripted Charger badge, rear-facing scoops on the R/T doors with large R/T emblems, and a redesigned bumblebee tail stripe. The range now ran in three series: the base Charger, the Charger 500 and the R/T, the base car with a split-back vinyl bench and the others with sport bucket seats. The Charger 500 name, which a year earlier had meant a limited-production homologation special with a flush grille and flush rear window, now identified the volume middle model. The 1970 Charger 500 was a trim level, not a racing special.³

The sales result went the other way. Flory tabulates 49,768 Chargers for 1970, against 89,199 in the industry figures for 1969. The 1970 Charger Registry, which counts by VIN series and includes cars shipped in September 1970, gives 46,315: 9,345 base Chargers, 27,461 Charger 500s and 9,509 R/Ts. The two totals have not been reconciled, but either way production fell by close to half. Ate Up With Motor puts it the same way: sales dropped nearly 50 percent and failed to reach 50,000. By the registry's count, the Charger 500 was now the heart of the line, 59 percent of all 1970 Chargers.^4,5,6

The R/T kept its standard 440 Magnum and TorqueFlite, rated at 375 hp and 480 lb-ft, and for the first time added the 440 Six Pack, with three two-barrel carburettors, at 390 hp and 490 lb-ft, for $119.05. The Hemi remained at the top at $648.25 and 425 hp. The registry's US figures split 9,370 domestic R/Ts into 8,574 440 four-barrel cars, 684 Six Packs and 112 Hemis, the same 9,370 domestic total Mueller and Glatch print. The Six Packs divided almost evenly, 347 four-speeds and 337 automatics, and so did the Hemis, 56 and 56, with 12 more Hemi R/Ts built for Canada. Not every book agrees on the Hemi: Gunnell prints 42, and Newhardt's data box 116.^5,7,8,9

Read as proportions, the R/T figures describe a car most buyers ordered with an automatic and the standard engine. Of 8,574 domestic 440 four-barrel R/Ts, 7,131 had TorqueFlite and 1,443 the four-speed, about 17 percent. The Six Pack reached 7.3 percent of domestic R/Ts and the Hemi 1.2 percent. Total R/T production is itself a matter of accounting: Mueller and Glatch give 10,337 including export cars, while the registry gives 9,509 including Canada and cars shipped in September 1970. Both agree on the 9,370 built for the United States, and the gap between them lies in how export and late-shipped cars are counted, not in any disagreement about the domestic market.^5,7

The option sheet shows where R/T buyers actually spent their money. The registry's sales-code pages count 4,301 R/Ts with air conditioning at $357.65, 1,462 with the $142.85 Track Pak and 394 with the $235.65 Super Track Pak. The $161.65 SE package went on 1,452 R/Ts. The $461.45 power sunroof went on 112, the same number as the Hemi. The $14.05 high-impact paints, including Plum Crazy, Sublime, Panther Pink, Top Banana, Hemi Orange, Go Mango and Green Go, were ordered 3,317 times. The registry's option units appear to be calculated from rounded installation percentages, so they are approximate. Even so, the pattern is plain: more R/T buyers paid for air conditioning than for both Track Paks combined.⁵

The prices frame the choice. The registry gives $3,001 for the base Charger with the slant six, and Flory and the registry agree on $3,139 for the Charger 500 and $3,711 for the R/T, with the R/T's shipping weight at 3,638 lb. The Hemi's $648.25 added about 17 percent to the R/T's base price, and fewer than one domestic R/T buyer in eighty paid it. The Six Pack, at $119.05, matched the Hemi's advertised 490 lb-ft for less than a fifth of the Hemi's option price, and still found only 684 US buyers. Even the cheaper route to more power was a minority taste.^5,4

On the tracks, 1970 belonged to a Dodge team. NASCAR records Bobby Isaac's championship season with Nord Krauskopf's K&K Insurance Dodge and crew chief Harry Hyde: 11 wins, 32 top-five finishes and 38 top tens from 47 starts, after a 1969 season of 17 wins that ended sixth in points. Which Dodge body carried those wins is disputed. NASCAR's Hall of Fame account says Isaac won only once in the winged Daytona, at Texas World Speedway late in 1969, while Ate Up With Motor says he drove a Charger Daytona to the 1970 title. Dodge's heritage history claims that from September 1969 into 1970, Charger 500 and Daytona race cars won 45 of 59 NASCAR races.^10,11,6,3

Chrysler's other winged car had the headline races. Plymouth's Superbird brought Richard Petty back from his 1969 season with Ford, and NASCAR's catalogue of his wins records his first Superbird victory at the Carolina 500 on March 8, 1970. Pete Hamilton, placed with Petty Enterprises at Plymouth's request, won the Daytona 500 and both Talladega races that year in a second Superbird. The end came by regulation. Ate Up With Motor reports that Bill France ruled for 1971 that winged cars would be limited to engines of no more than 305 cu in. Dodge moved on in the showroom too, with an all-new, shorter Charger for 1971. The second-generation body, and the aero era it had provoked, finished together.^12,13,14,6,3