1970 Dodge Challenger R/T New Car Show Y28 Public Relations M51 sunroof

1970 Challenger R/TThe Public Relations Car This FE5 Rallye Red Challenger R/T was ordered by Dodge in the winter of 1970 as a Public Relations car for the new car show in the spring of 1970. It was built two units after the first Panther Pink Challenger made by Dodge. which was the well documented 440-6 pack Challenger convertible SHOW CAR that was built for the new car spring show. The pink car was a 4 speed car. with a white interior. hood blackout and was one of two Challengers ever made with a chartreuse longitutidinal stripe. The pink car was featured in Mopar Collector's Guide a few years ago and is well known to E-body collectors. What this means. is that this red public relations car was ordered for the spring new car show in 1970. This build order was verified by Barry Washington. keeper of the 1970 Hamtramck registry. when I sent him the specifics and VIN on this car. This Challenger is one of the most expensive E-bodies ever made with a factory list price of $5572. 25! Wow! That was some huge money back in 1970. There were no Cudas made in 1970 or 71 with the M51 sunroof option. so a Cuda convertible was cheaper than a Challenger R/T with a sunroof. Since the Cuda had a lower base price than a Challenger R/T. with the same equipment the Cuda would always be cheaper than the R/T. This Challenger was more expensive than all of the 70-71 Cudas made-period. The price below came from the 1970 Dodge Salesman pocket guide published in the winter of 1970. It didn't include some of the limited edition Challenger models in that book. Remember that some options were not available if you ordered a certain package or the price could be more or less. There were lots of rules about what could be ordered and more than one price given the model or other packages or options ordered. A/C was a high dollar option that could only be ordered with a 2 or 4bbl. engine. Automatic transmissions and power options were not cheap either and quickly upped the price. The power sunroof option was the next most expensive option after the Hemi. Make no mistake that while there isn't a official list or ranking of the most expensive E-bodies made. this one is very near the top of it. We would need to know about every single car sold by Dodge and Plymouth in order to make such a list. However. that list will never exist as we don't have that information. OPTION LIST Base Price JS23 $3266. 00 Molding Group A63 $37. 20Light Group A01 $41. 15Seat Belt Group C15 $13. 75Protection Group A05 $43. 25Air Conditioning H51 $357. 65Speed Control N88 $57. 95Leather Bucket Seats $64. 75Console C16 $53. 35Locking Gas Cap J46 $4. 40Tinted Glass G11 $32. 75Headlight Delay L42 $13. 00Rear Window Defog H31 $26. 25Painted Sport Mirror LH $15. 15Painted Sport Mirror RH $10. 95Pedal Dress UP J41 $5. 45Disc Brakes B41 $27. 90Power Brakes B51 $42. 95Power Steering S77 $90. 35Power Windows P31 $105. 20Luggage Rack M91 $32. 35AM/FM radio R35 $213. 60Dual Rear Speakers $25. 906way Seat Adjuster C62 $33. 30Rim Blow Steer S83 $24. 60Power Sun Roof M51 $461. 45Torqueflite Trans. D34 $227. 05Undercoating/hood pad $16. 60Road Wheels W23 $64. 95F70-14 RWL tires T87 $50. 10Collapsible Spare W34 $12. 95Shipping (approx. )* $100. 00TOTAL $5572. 25*I don't know the exact amount that would have been charged for shipping this car. Since it was meant to be used by Chrysler for promotional purposes. who knows if they even made a window sticker for it or assigned a amount for shipping on such a sticker. There was a new car show held in Detroit and New York City that spring. so it could have been used at either show. This is a restoration project. The first two pictures of it shown still together are ones I took before taking it apart in 1989. Those are to give you an idea of what it would look like finished. Actually if you looked at the Dodge new car brochure for 1970. it has a red Challenger on the front that looks just like this car. It comes with a lot of rare and valuable spare parts that you are going to need to restore it and they are the most difficult parts to locate. It is not numbers matching. though the rear and trans may be original. Keep reading because even if you can't swing the price. it is still a very interesting car. It requires someone with either the skills to restore it themselves or the money to do so. It has a real clean body to start with. that you seldom find any more! If you could go back 27 years. Challengers could be found in this good of condition. I took it off the road and apart in 1989-90! It has been sitting like this since then. It is waiting for the right person to finish bringing it back to life. This heavily optioned car had just about every option. the expensive M51 power sunroof/vinyl top and power everything including windows. steering and disc brakes. It came with a six-way adjustable seat. Rim Blow steering wheel. cruise control (holy cow!). AM/FM stereo radio. five speaker system and rear defogger. leather front buckets and SE style door panels. A/C. console. light package. tinted glass and Space Saver Spare. Outside it had a Flip Top Gas Cap. Road Wheels. wide rocker panel moldings and a luggage rack-both rare options. It also had dual painted sport mirrors. bumper guards and the obligatory side door moldings that most Public Relations cars had. The car was originally equipped with a 383-4bbl. . Torqueflite transmission and 3:23 Sure Grip rear end and front and rear sway bars. shod with F70-14 RWL tires on Road Wheels. Original colors are shown in the first few pictures. Impressive? Hell yes it is! This is a piece of Chrysler history. not just one of 2. 00 V-code six pack Challengers or some 318 cloned Hemi mobile. It is a true one of one and will be a very exciting car when properly restored. This is the only one like it and it is historically significant to boot! I know what the parts I have are worth. I have bought and sold these same parts through the years. I have owned a Challenger continuously since 1975. Reproduction parts are fine if you just can't find or afford the real deal. but the real thing is king! The car comes with its original factory documents including a Broadcast Sheet. both fender tags (it's a 2 tag car). the door VIN tag. as well as the original dash pad with the VIN tag on it. The dash VIN tag is in nice shape. I bought this car in 1988 from a collector in Colorado. It had lived there for some time and came with a Colorado title and tags. I assume Chrysler auctioned this car off after the new car show was over in the Spring of 1970. Hard to say where it went after that. but it was living in Colorado for awhile as evidenced by its condition when I got it. I would guess this car may have been used at the Detroit show since it was made right behind one of the original show cars. I think the Detroit show was before the NYC show. I began to restore the body in 1989 and got pretty far with it. I took the car apart. but left the doors on it. I wet sandblasted most of the body. using 40 bags of silica sand. There is a picture of it being blasted in my backyard in SE Florida. The key here is that I wet sandblasted it so the metal did not warp during the process. The water cooled the metal while the sand stripped it. Few Challengers had their bodies stripped in that time period. But then I also had another Challenger R/T sunroof car acid dipped that same year! So I was way ahead of the times in terms of restoration techniques used on old Mopars. I didn't screw around with doing things half ways! After stripping the body. I found some rust damage. but overall the car wasn't bad. Some patch work was done on the trunk floor (shown) and RH quarter panel. I replaced the skin of the LH quarter. leaving the original sail panel in place. I also replaced the drivers floor pan (just the drivers portion). The front part of the car was and still is in fantastic shape without the typical rust. It has a beautiful cowl and roof. Very nice solid car. I have pictures of what it looked like as I stripped and repaired it. Inspecting the rear end of the car the other day when I took some of the pictures. it is still in amazing shape! The rails are solid. the old patch work is like it was done last month. You could even leave the trunk floor as it currently is because it is solid as a rock. It would hold whatever weight you want to put on it! You don't find bodies like this any more on unrestored Mopars. I have seen the cancerous E-bodies offered up at the Mopar Nationals in recent years and this one is flipping fantastic! Back in 1989. after stripping it. I used a mild acid to clean up the flash rust left by the water in the blasting process. The water used in the blasting process caused flash rust (as seen in the one picture of the front end. where it looks a rusty brown color). At any rate the acid acted as a rust cleaner and a primer and turned the panels a white color and in some cases black like on the K-frame. There is still some of this primer left on the top of the trunk floor that I meant to remove. but left on as I ran out of primer. 25 years ago After wire brushing the acid primer off. I sealed up the stripped surfaces with epoxy enamel primer sealer and it has prevented rust ever since. This bad boy is fantastic! The car has always been inside since I have owned. It has been kept dry and protected. The building you see it sitting in was built in 1991 and it has been in it ever since the building was built. Prior to that it was always stored inside after I stripped it and treated it with acid and then patched and sealed it. Had I completed the resto of this car. I intended to redo the metal work on the back end of the car as this one deserves the best anyone can give it. Back in 1989. the work I did was extensive and serious resto work for that time period. You would be shocked at how many guys were trying to figure out how many buckets of bondo it was going to take to restore their rusty muscle cars in 1989! Not me-I had more pride than that. I will point out that while I did some of the work on the car myself. I can't take credit for a lot of it. I had an experienced body man do the metal work and he was familiar with wet sand blasting cars. We went on to own and operate a body shop together for a short period. His patch work is good. I can send more pictures of the body to serious bidders. Please don't ask me to send pictures unless you have the money to buy this car with. It has a reserve on it and yes. you could buy a completed car for the reserve price. At any rate what you will find on this car is a very solid foundation to work with. It is beautiful underneath too! It comes with many of its original parts. I am including a lot of valuable NOS and OEM parts that are impossible to find any more. Sure. you can get reproduction stuff. but genuine parts make you feel a lot better about your resto! Many of these parts are the ones this car was born with. You will have to restore or detail some of the used parts. but they are correct for this car. The biggest part you will have to find yourself is the Power Bulge Hood. The rest of the car's original body parts come with it except for the LH quarter skin. Included is the car's original grill (very nice). NOS headlight bezels. new repop wedge big block head pipes (exhaust). exhaust manifolds. trans. rear end. doors. seats. 70 console. seat belts. SE door panels in beautiful condition. its original sport mirrors. bumper guards and bumpers. a front and rear valance. I also have a complete set of the door rub moldings which most Public Relations cars (especially Challengers) were equipped with. There are other parts I have forgotten about that I will include too. The original sunroof panel. motor and cables are included. I do have a spare complete and functional sunroof assembly that actually works. Its sale can be negotiated with the deal. It came out of a 71 New Yorker. You can see how it all goes together and is supposed to work. Some very rare parts that are about impossible to find include the car's original trunk lid. The trunk lid used on a car equipped with the luggage rack is different from ones without. This lid is really nice and has a very clean lip on it. The original dash pad is cracked. You get that. plus a fantastic. beautiful replacement OEM pad that I bought in 1990. It is black with the A/C vents and is in perfect condition!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a A/C pad. but does not have the cut outs for the L and R speakers. Possibly you can figure out how to modify that to make it work for this car? It is a original 1970 Challenger dash pad and has great Challenger badging or script on it. It also comes with the original instruments which will need to be restored. but they are really decent gauges. I have the clock pictured in the last picture. Also included is the car's original AM/FM Thumbwheel radio and the small front speakers that go in the dash. I had the radio serviced a few years ago and it did work then. I also have the original steering column with the cruise control stalk still on it and I believe I have most of the cruise control setup to go with. I have a real nice Rim Blow steering Wheel and cap that is a prime candidate for a restification. I don't have the wheel pictured. If I had more room for additional pictures in the auction. I would have included it. The console I have for it is the correct 70 version and it is in nice condition. although it is green. I also have a nice top plate for it. Seats are included. but I don't have a good six way adjuster for them any more. The previous owner swiped the six way seat adjuster out of the car. as well as the rear power window motor set up. I don't have all of the power window motors needed. but I do have the bezels for the switches and they go with. The seat belt set is from a 70 SE Challenger and it is real nice. I also have a complete set of the door rub moldings which most Public Relations cars (especially Challengers) were equipped with. The holes are still in the original body panels if you want to put them back on. Also included are a pair of the wide rocker panel moldings. These are in decent shape and could be reused with some clean up and simple detailing. I do not have the taillight assembly for it. You can source a repop or possibly a nice OEM unit. I may have some of the sidemarkers for it too. but those are available as reproduction pieces. I have the original fenders which are really nice pieces. Never dented or wrecked. They had a slit of rust on the lower corners like a lot of them. but have been patched. They are in good restorable condition. The original fenders were made from a heavier gauge of sheet metal than the modern repops are. If you don't like dents if you lean on them while servicing the motor. then the original fenders are the way to go! The doors are in good shape without rust and have good lips. The original painted sport mirrors go with and need new glass. The sunroof panel is in good shape. The inside floor is really nice. though I replaced the drivers pan. The inner fenders and cowl are excellent. as is the roof and radiator support. I have the back window and side glass for the car. The windshield broke. Maybe you would want new reproduction glass. Your call. I will include the automatic transmission. nbsp;383 engine and rear end/axle that came in the car if you want them. The engine is not original to the car. I am not sure about the trans or rear. Who cares though? This car has way more going for it than a matching numbers drivetrain-right? OK. what we have here is a 1 of 1. historically significant. one of the most expensive E-bodies ever made. nice color combination and some very cool original options. All of these parts are worth an easy $20K alone. The body is fantastic and we all know you can't buy a good rolling body for under $20K by itself that was just anybody's old car. Do you get where I am going? I might consider a Mopar trade plus cash (newer or vintage). Talk to me if you have the ability to actually purchase this car or make a deal. Bear in mind that in just the last two pictures of this auction. there are a good $5. 00 worth of parts pictured. Those are just a few of the rare parts you get with the car. I am not available in the evenings Monday-Friday. except on the weekends. I can be reached in the mornings until about 1 p. m. CST. Email me first if you are really hot for this car and I might send you my phone number. The car is located near Peoria. IL. I-74 runs through Peoria and I am 35 miles west of there. I know this car isn't meant for everyone. I want it to go to someone who has the means and desire to restore it right. I have been saving it and preserving it for a long time. I bought my first Challenger in 1975 and have owned one continuously ever since. so I know them well and what they are worth. This car was also mentioned in a feature article about my other Challenger in Mopar Collector's Guide in 2006. so it has already had some publicity! It is a known quantity. No one has seen it in the last 25 years. So. yes. there are some barn finds out there still-but not many. Thanks for looking at this auction! Hope you enjoyed it. TERMS:Buyer must arrange for pick up and transportation of the car and its parts within a reasonable period of time. I can continue to store this car for up to 30 days without issue or additional charge. However. I expect full payment sooner than that. I like cash BTW and that is how I want to be paid. Down payment of $500 is expected within 24 hours (non-refundable deposit) to Paypal. Balance is due within 7 days or later if other arrangements are made with seller. I expect you to send me a message within 24 hours for sure. DO NOT bid if you don't have the money or intend to follow through with the purchase-thank you! On Apr-26-15 at 18:33:34 PDT. seller added the following information: I prefer not to list the complete VIN number to protect the next owner from possible fraud. The car was built in February of 1970 at Hamtramck. It would have been sent to American Sunroof for installation of the sunroof before the final assembly process was complete. American Sunroof installed all of the sunroofs for the Big 3 auto makers. After the sunroof was installed. the car was returned to Hamtramck for final assembly and inspection. The Challenger sunroof was power assisted like a modern sunroof. The sunroof is a solid metal panel covered in vinyl. It retracts back into the roof opening and does not have a pop up feature like modern sunroofs often do. A vinyl roof was mandatory with sunroof cars and was part of the M51 sunroof package. I do have a new vinyl roof for this car that I bought in 1990 from Legendary Interiors. It may be made from NOS vinyl versus the materials that Legendary now reproduces for their vinyl roofs. I also have extra material to cover the sunroof panel. I believe I have a headliner bow. A sunroof car only uses one bow. the rear one. The headliner was primarily glued in place once it is stretched off of the headliner bow. It was glued into position on the bottom of the panel. The spare sunroof I have demonstrates better how it all went together. On Apr-27-15 at 09:22:37 PDT. seller added the following information: The VIN number of course starts with "JS23N0B". not "JS23N1B" indicating a R/T Challenger model made with a 383 Magnum or HP motor in 1970 at the Hamtramck assembly plant. My mistake when I created the auction.