By Roger Lee Randles
When your first car was a 1966 Plymouth Satellite, it is no surprise that you call yourself a Mopar guy, belong to the Music City Mopar club, or that you have a Plum Crazy Dodge Challenger today. But it might be surprising that you have a pair of Challengers — a 1971 and a 2010.
The owner of the pair of Challengers is Wayne Hall, and he had the ’66 Satellite during high school, “It was a 318 automatic,” he recalls.
Hall’s ’71 Challenger originally came out of Alabama when a fellow club member of his bought the car and sold it to Hall. “He called me and said ‘I found a car you want,’ so I went and got it,” he said.
Hall bought the ’71 seven or eight years ago for about $3,500. At that time it was a green, 318 V-8, automatic car, but he never intended for it to stay as he found it. “I bought it to modify,” he says, quickly adding, “it took me five years to get it where it’s at.”
Where it’s at, as Hall puts it, post modifications, is a 440 Six-Pack with a TREMEC 5-speed transmission under a Plum Crazy exterior, many other internal goodies, and a rumble from the exhaust pipes that screams “Look out — here I come!”
The car was painted with DuPont basecoat/clearcoat by Aaron Huddleston, a friend of Hall’s who once painted Peterbilt trucks for a living. “He had a paint shop that he built in his garage, and he painted the car for me when he was laid off about two or three years ago,” Hall said.
Another Mopar club member, Chuck Vaughn, did all the engine work, and the car sounds ready for the drag strip these days. Those 440 Six-Packs were 390 horse from the factory, but Hall’s is a beefed-up version — .040 over with a three-angle valve job — and he surmises that it now makes in the neighborhood of 425 horses.
Looking under the hood at the massive 440 V8 and hearing the satisfying, deep-throated rumble emitted from the exhausts begs the question has he raced the car? “No … really, it seems like I’m working on it all the time,” he says with a nervous chuckle before explaining. “I’ve got an oil leak now; I just can’t quite get it solved. Eventually I’ll get it fixed. I broke a rocker arm last year.” The car sat in his garage for a year when he was burned out over changing the tranny several times and the oil all drained out of the motor in such a way that when he changed the oil and started the car it experienced a dry start which broke the rocker arm.
He originally ran a 4-speed Hemi transmission which wouldn’t go from reverse into neutral,
“ … so you had to get under the car and push the little lever.” He says he got tired of doing that but his transmission problems were finally eliminated when he went to the TREMEC 5-speed.
It sounds like the 5-speed will give long life to the engine if use at lower rpms means anything in that area. “Really, when it cruises at 75 mph, you’re probably turning about 2,000 rpms,” Hall said. This purple Mopar just lopes along, effortlessly, not expending any great amount of energy — at 75 mph!
For the Dodge division of Chrysler Corp., the Challenger was Mercury inspired — Cougar inspired, to be more precise. Chrysler entertained thoughts of a Challenger-type pony car when it became aware of the Cougar in mid-1966, but it was the Dodge division that launched this iconic nameplate in 1970 after a Cougar had actually been brought into their design studio several years earlier to get the creative juices flowing. Challenger’s final design came from studio chief Bill Brownie who gave the car its name.
Hall has entered his ’71 Challenger in several shows thus far and has won “a couple of Best in Shows, and a few we just won our class,” he says.
“ … You’ll hardly find any car as pretty as Dodge Challenger. It’s the kind of sports compact you buy when you don’t want one like everyone else’s.”
The above ad copy from 1971 says a lot about the whole Dodge Challenger mystique — then and now. Challenger is as it has been since its creation: something different and something sexy.
In case you’re wondering, Hall’s 2010 model is a limited edition Plum Crazy Challenger R-T Classic with a 5.7 liter Hemi under the hood and a six-speed standard transmission. Hall obviously prefers his giddyup in shades of purple!
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| Length | 192” |
| Wheelbase | 110” | Weight | 3,120 lbs. |
| Engine | 318 V-8 |
| Horsepower | bhp 230 @ 4,400 rpm |
| Compression | 9.0:1 |
| Price New | $2,950 |
| Owner | Wayne Hall |
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