To be precise it was a drag race on the interstate late at night back about early winter '71. Refer back to my thread in this forum about the Plum Crazy 340 4 speed Challenger and love story combined. My friend riding shotgun during the test drive is my opponent in this drag race. North bound I-75 from Marietta, Ga. towards Atlanta was the place. My friend had just purchased a 1970 Road Runner 440 6 Pack 4 speed black on black for the whopping sum of $1950. The dealer had written in shoe polish across the windshield "Rapid Transit". As I have stated before, the car lots were full of used muscle cars waiting for a new home. 1950 bucks was not a small sum of money at this time but my friend took the plunge as he suffered from the same addiction as most young men and a few young women had back then.....the addiction was made up of a combination of youth, horsepower, testosterone and the ability to abandon common sense when it came fast cars. The Road Runner punched out 395 horsepower so says Mopar, to make it official. My 340 Challenger put out 275 horsepower so says Mopar, to make it official. It is my opinion and the opinion of many others that these horsepower ratings were well underrated by Mopar to get past fedgov and the insurance companies. There is still a lot of discussion about this subject and the debate will and should continue. In spite of the obvious mismatch of horsepower/torque between these cars we decided to take them out on I-75 to try them out. It was late at night and for the time being we had the interstate to ourselves. We pulled onto the interstate and came to a complete stop. We both revved up and took off, both of us trying to keep the cars in a straight line in the midst of burning rubber, loud exhaust and screaming engines. We would go through the gears remaining neck and neck to around 105 mph and then the Road Runner took off like he came out of a slingshot and he roared ahead and all that I saw was his taillights. This outcome was fairly predictable but we were both surprised that the 340 Challenger could hold its own in the quarter mile against the 440 6 Pack Road Runner. The stories were out there of 340s taking 440s in the quarter mile. I suppose it comes down to low end torque vs. high end torque. I myself have seen back in the day a '70 T/A Challenger 340 6 Pack take a 440 Road Runner in the quarter mile. Stories abound to this day of the 440 taking the 426 Hemi in the quarter mile but after that distance all of that torque opened up so the Hemi would win in distances greater than a quarter mile. BTW......The '70 T/A Challenger was almost rare back then with less than 2500 produced. Anything with a 426 Hemi in it was hard to find due to the added cost of the Hemi. Back then I saw one Hemi Cuda and maybe three Hemi Challengers. These days my 2016 Plum Crazy Challenger R/T sits in the garage and is driven on sunny dry days on the weekends. I have had the car for 15 months and I have yet to spin the tires on it and I probably never will. The speedo has hit 115 mph a couple of times with plenty more to go but I backed off and glad I did.
My street racing days are coming to a close. How ever I can relate. I have put a smack down on my fare share of unsuspecting. Some background on me, my dad was engine builder. So I’ve spent life around big air compressors. I went to college for manufacturing engineering. I built a S10 with a 383 that was a blast to drive in high school. I needed a tow rig for the S10 so I bought a Duramax. After that I started playing with the Duramax. Then I built a compound turbo truck, what a riot that thing was. All I can say is corvette what? I pissed a lot of people off in the mid 2000s around the mid west. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
