1970 Dodge Challenger R/T Convertible in Black & 440 Engine Sound

Tom Lembeck has spent decades building one of the more serious MOPAR collections around, so when he calls this 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T Convertible one of his favorites, it’s worth paying attention. The car wears a rare Triple Black specification — paint, top, and interior all finished in black — paired with the potent 440 Six Pack engine, and Tom has owned it since 1999. Lou Costabile sat down with him in Chicago to find out why.

There’s a difference between owning a rare car and understanding exactly why it’s rare, and Tom Lembeck falls firmly into the second category. He’s been collecting MOPAR muscle for decades, which means he’s seen more Challengers than most people will see in a lifetime — and yet he still considers this particular 1970 R/T Convertible one of the standouts in his entire collection. The reason comes down to a color combination most Challenger buyers in 1970 never dared to order, paired with an engine most people assume was reserved for the coupe. Lou Costabile caught up with Tom in Chicago to find out why this specific car earned a permanent place in a serious collector’s garage.

The Rarest Kind of All-Black

What makes this Challenger immediately stand apart is what collectors call a ‘Triple Black’ specification — the exterior paint, the convertible top, and the interior are all finished in black, a combination that was far less common on 1970 Challengers than buyers might assume. Most convertible buyers of the era leaned toward brighter, louder colors specifically to show off the car’s drop-top styling; ordering every visible surface in black was a deliberate, almost understated choice that ran against the grain of typical muscle-car marketing. That rarity is precisely what caught Tom Lembeck’s attention when he found this example, and it’s a big part of why, out of an entire MOPAR collection, this particular Challenger still gets singled out as one of his favorites.

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The Engine Most People Get Wrong

Under the hood sits a 440 cubic-inch V8 fitted with the Six Pack triple two-barrel carburetor setup — commonly shortened to ‘440-6’ — an engine option that trailed only the mythical 426 Hemi in the Challenger’s factory performance hierarchy. Rated at 390 horsepower from the factory, the 440-6 offered nearly Hemi-level performance without the Hemi’s notoriously fussy street manners, higher cost, and harder-to-source parts, which made it the practical choice for buyers who wanted serious power they could actually live with day to day. In a convertible specifically, the 440-6 is a far rarer find than in the hardtop, since fewer buyers ordered top-tier performance engines in the softer, heavier drop-top body style. Lou’s video captures the engine running, and the exhaust note alone tells you everything you need to know about why this option mattered to period buyers.

Twenty-Plus Years With One Owner

Tom has owned this Challenger since 1999, which puts his stewardship of the car at well over two decades by the time this video was filmed. That kind of single-owner longevity matters enormously in the collector world — it generally means consistent, careful maintenance rather than the patchwork history that comes from a car passing through several hands, each with different priorities and different budgets. It also means Tom has had two decades to learn every detail of this particular Challenger’s history, quirks, and originality, turning him into exactly the kind of knowledgeable steward that a rare Triple Black 440-6 convertible deserves. Few collector cars get that kind of continuity of care.

Building a Collection Around MOPAR Muscle

This Challenger doesn’t exist in isolation — it’s one piece of a broader MOPAR collection Tom has assembled over the years, and Lou Costabile’s ‘My Car Story’ series has profiled Tom’s cars before, building a picture of a collector with a genuine eye for the specific variants that matter most to serious Mopar people. Rather than chasing the flashiest or most obvious muscle cars, Tom’s collection leans toward examples with the kind of rare factory specifications — unusual color combinations, top-tier engine options, low production numbers — that only become apparent once you’ve spent years studying the details. That’s a very different collecting philosophy than simply buying the most famous nameplate available, and it shows in a car like this one.

The 1970 Challenger’s Place in Muscle Car History

The 1970 model year holds a special place in Challenger history as the nameplate’s very first year of production, launched by Dodge specifically to compete with the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro in the booming pony car market. It arrived at what many enthusiasts consider the absolute peak of the muscle car era, right before rising insurance premiums, tightening emissions regulations, and a 1973 oil crisis combined to gut the entire performance-car segment within just a few years. That narrow window makes any well-optioned 1970 Challenger desirable, but a convertible with the 440-6 and Triple Black specification represents a genuinely small slice of an already limited production run — exactly the kind of car serious collectors spend years hunting down.

What a Car Like This Is Worth Today

Rare-spec 1970 Challenger R/T convertibles with top-tier engine options have become some of the most sought-after cars in the entire muscle car market, regularly commanding six-figure prices at major auctions when documentation and originality check out. A Triple Black example with the 440-6, owned by the same collector for over two decades with a documented history, checks nearly every box serious bidders look for. Whether or not Tom ever intends to sell — and collectors like him rarely do — the numbers underline just how much a car like this has appreciated since he first found it back in 1999.

Why This Interview Stands Out

What separates Lou Costabile’s ‘My Car Story’ videos from a typical car-spotting clip is the access — getting an owner as knowledgeable as Tom Lembeck to walk through exactly why a specific car earned its place in a serious collection tells you far more than a spec sheet ever could. This isn’t just footage of a rare Challenger; it’s a conversation with someone who has spent over twenty years learning everything there is to know about it. For anyone chasing the story behind a genuinely rare piece of MOPAR history, that combination of access and expertise is hard to beat. Between the Triple Black spec, the 440-6, and Tom’s twenty-plus years behind the wheel, this Challenger is as complete a story as a single car can tell.

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