1970 Charger R/T Street Shaker Is Absolutely a Head Turner!

A 1970 Dodge Charger R/T nicknamed “Street Shaker” showed up at Detroit Autorama 2013 with a spoiler most ’70 Chargers never wore from the factory — and somehow made it look right. Commenters argued color combinations, debated originality, and one self-described Chevy fan admitted the Mopar won him over. See what tipped the scale.

Some Mopar debates never really settle — they just find a new car to reopen them on. A wing on the back of a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T is exactly the kind of detail that should look wrong, tacked-on, aftermarket in the bad sense. And yet here’s a Charger nicknamed “Street Shaker,” photographed on the Detroit Autorama floor, that seems to have quietly ended the argument for a lot of people who walked past it. How does a modification that “shouldn’t” belong on this body suddenly look like it always did?

Meet “Street Shaker” — A Name That Autorama Regulars Don’t Forget

Nicknames stick to standout builds for a reason, and “Street Shaker” is the kind of name that promises attitude before you’ve even seen the car in person. Shot at the Detroit Autorama 2013 — one of the most storied indoor custom car shows in the country, held annually at Detroit’s Cobo Center and famous for launching the Ridler Award, the sport’s most prestigious build honor — this 1970 Dodge Charger R/T earned its spot among the show floor’s standouts. The creator, who has documented countless muscle cars across years of show coverage, went on record calling it one of the nicest 1970 Chargers he’s personally come across, a notable claim given how many Chargers of this exact model year have passed in front of his camera at events nationwide. That’s not a throwaway compliment; the 1970 Charger R/T is one of the most collected and reproduced muscle cars in the hobby, so standing out in that field means genuinely earning it.

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The 1970 Charger R/T’s Place in Mopar History

The 1970 model year holds a specific significance in Charger lore — it was the final year of the second-generation “coke bottle” body style before Dodge redesigned the car for 1971, making these Chargers the last of a design era that many enthusiasts consider the model’s visual peak. The R/T package added serious credibility under the skin, typically pairing performance-tuned suspension with big-block power options that made the Charger a legitimate street and strip contender rather than just a styling exercise. Original 1970 R/T buyers could option everything from a 440 Magnum up to the fearsome 426 Hemi, and that range of factory performance is part of why surviving, well-executed examples command such attention decades later. A build-quality standout from this specific model year isn’t just another pretty street machine — it’s representing arguably the last and most visually refined year of one of Mopar’s most important nameplates before the platform changed shape entirely.

The Spoiler Question: Does It Actually Belong There?

Nothing in the comments generated more back-and-forth than the car’s rear spoiler. Commenters were quick to point out that most original 1970 Chargers didn’t come from the factory with a rear spoiler at all — that styling cue is more commonly associated with later Mopar aero cars and specific high-performance variants, not the standard R/T lineup. That historical mismatch is exactly what sparked the debate: is a non-original spoiler a violation of the car’s factory-correct lines, or a legitimate customization choice on a street machine build that was never claiming numbers-matching originality in the first place? What tipped the conversation in the car’s favor was a recurring admission from multiple commenters that, regardless of the history, this was the first time they’d seen a spoiler actually look like it belonged on a ’70 Charger’s rear deck. That’s a meaningful concession in a community where bolt-on additions to classic bodies are usually met with more skepticism than praise.

Pewter and Candy Orange — A Color Combination Nobody Expected to Work

Paint and color combination discussions dominated a huge share of the response, with commenters specifically calling out the pairing of pewter as the primary body color with candy orange accents woven through the design. Candy paint itself is a specialized, labor-intensive process — translucent colored layers applied over a metallic or reflective base coat, then clear-coated to produce depth and shift that flat paint simply cannot replicate under show lighting. Pairing that kind of vibrant, saturated accent color against a cooler, more subdued pewter base is a genuinely unconventional choice; most builders reach for higher-contrast or more traditional muscle car color stories. Multiple commenters admitted outright that they wouldn’t have expected the combination to work on paper, yet conceded it succeeded in person on this particular Charger. That kind of reaction — surprise that a risk paid off — tends to carry more weight in a show-car comment section than straightforward praise for a color palette everyone already expected to look good.

When a Chevy Fan Admits a Mopar Impressed Him

Brand loyalty runs deep in muscle car culture, where Ford, Chevy, and Mopar camps have needled each other for over half a century, so it’s notable when the walls come down even briefly. One commenter identified themselves as a Chevy fan first, before admitting this particular Charger impressed him anyway, specifically praising the build quality on display. That kind of cross-brand acknowledgment doesn’t happen casually in enthusiast comment sections, where tribal loyalty often colors reactions to competing manufacturers regardless of a build’s actual merit. It suggests “Street Shaker” wasn’t just impressing the Mopar faithful who’d be inclined to appreciate a well-executed Charger by default — it was winning over viewers who walked in with a rooting interest against it. For a build to cross that line, the fabrication, paint, and overall execution have to be obvious enough that even skeptics can’t find a real complaint to hang their brand allegiance on.

Ranked Among the Best: The “Top 5” Charger Claims

Beyond individual praise for the paint and spoiler, several commenters went further and ranked “Street Shaker” among the best-looking Chargers they’d personally ever seen, with one viewer explicitly calling it a clear “top 5” contender. That’s a bold claim for any 1970 Charger R/T, a model year with no shortage of world-class restorations and custom builds competing for attention at major shows every season. Rankings like this matter less as objective fact and more as a signal of how a build lands emotionally with viewers who’ve spent years watching Mopar content — when someone who has presumably seen dozens or hundreds of Chargers across shows and online coverage places one build in their personal top tier, it reflects a build that’s doing something more than checking the usual boxes of clean paint and correct badging. It’s standing out in a field where standing out is genuinely difficult.

Why Detroit Autorama Remains the Proving Ground for Builds Like This

Detroit Autorama isn’t just another stop on the show circuit — it’s held in the city that built the American muscle car industry, and it carries a weight that few other indoor shows can match. Debuting a build there, or simply displaying it prominently enough to get filmed by dedicated coverage creators, puts a car in front of an audience with deep institutional knowledge of what separates a good build from a great one. Multiple commenters specifically thanked both the Autorama show floor and the creator for bringing this level of Mopar coverage to their feed, with several explicitly requesting more Charger and Mopar features going forward. That kind of direct engagement — audience members asking for more of a specific brand’s content — is a strong indicator of how well this particular video resonated beyond just this one car, reflecting a hunger among viewers for deeper Mopar-focused coverage from Autorama’s massive annual lineup of builds.

What Makes a Street Machine Build Actually Work

What ties every thread of the comment section together — the spoiler debate, the paint praise, the cross-brand admiration, the top-5 rankings — is that “Street Shaker” succeeded by taking real risks rather than playing it safe. Adding a non-factory spoiler to a model year that never offered one, committing to a candy orange and pewter combination that could easily have clashed, and executing both well enough to win over skeptics is a much harder needle to thread than a numbers-matching restoration following a known blueprint. Street machine builds live or die on exactly these kinds of judgment calls, where the builder has to balance respect for the original design against a genuine creative vision. Based on the reaction out of Detroit Autorama 2013, this particular Charger threaded that needle about as well as any 1970 R/T on the circuit that year, turning what could have been a controversial modification into what several viewers now consider one of the best-looking examples of the model they’ve ever seen.

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