We all know what love for classic muscle means, but we’d have a hard time finding a tale that expresses it better than this 18-year-old coming across a 1970 Dodge Challenger while driving around and reportedly buying the vehicle “within the hour” for the kind of money you’d spend on a new iPhone.
As the Mopar fan states on Instagram and YouTube, he was driving around on some back roads earlier this month when he noticed the familiar taillights of the ’70 Charger. And the enthusiast, who builds cars with his father, was looking for a new project, he decided to have a chat with the property owner.
Fortunately, it seems this wasn’t one of those cases where somebody who can’t seem to be able to restore a vehicle in time wouldn’t let go of it. While the yard that had hosted the Charger since the mid-1990s also had other muscle cars, the Dodge was the only one for sale. And Cale Majchrowski wasted no time in taking the vehicle home to give it a new lease on life.
Even in this condition, $1,000 is an insane deal for a 1970 Charger
Heck, these details almost sound too good for the real world: while prices for these old Mopars are insane these days, Cale only paid $1,000 for the machine.
Sure, sitting in Illinois’ four-season weather (this is the young man’s home state) for three decades had taken a serious toll on the vehicle—rust goes from the panels to the floor and even ate away parts of the frame. But, even in this condition, the vehicle could probably trade hands for many times more.
We can only imagine the forces that drove the undisclosed conversation between the buyers and the seller. For one, the former owner, who had bought the vehicle back in 1983 and parked it due to an issue with the engine, initially told Cale the vehicle came with a 318 (the 5.2L base V8).
It was actually a Big-Block bruiser
However, much to his amazement, the aficionado later discovered this is a Big Block car featuring a 383 (6.3L V8), which is mated to a three-speed automatic with a floor shifter. Alas, while the cylinder head covers seem to be off, this may be the of this rusty motor’s issues. In other words, the 383 may be too far gone for a viable restoration. And while the enthusiast is thinking about putting another Mopar motor in there, it’s still too early to tell.
The initial plan is to figure out the minimal investment that will allow the Charger to run and drive once again. The chassis probably needs some bracing to deal with the said rust. And if a power wash will probably remove quite a bit of the mold covering the body, the mice-infested interior needs much more attention than that. Oh well, at least all the parts of the cabin seem to be there.
Cale, which also builds scale models—he even made one for Derek Bieri of the Vice Grip Garage YouTube label—gives us a walkaround of the 1970 Charger in the YouTube video below—ironically, this isn’t his favorite year for the classic Charger. That would be 1969, but the aficionado seems determined to revive the Dodge anyway. And the outro of the clip shows him working on the stripped-out interior of another classic Mopar.
This is a 1972 Plymouth Duster got from Albuquerque, NM back in 2019. Meanwhile, the vehicle has been LS-swapped (yep, this will be tough on traditionalists) and now seems to serve as a patina daily driver.
