1970 Dodge Challenger R/T SE in Panther Pink & 383 Engine Sound

Ken Katarynchuk drove his 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T SE hundreds of miles from Canada to Carlisle Events wearing a factory Panther Pink paint job most Mopar buyers never dared to order. Under the pink and magenta stripes sits a 383 four-barrel V8 and a 4-speed manual — a combination that has kept this car light, quick, and unmistakably his for nearly two decades. Watch to see why a stuffed Pink Panther riding shotgun might be the most honest tribute this Challenger could get.

Most muscle car owners spend their restoration budget chasing a color that will blend in at a cruise night — something safe, something that will not draw a second look from the judges. Ken Katarynchuk did the opposite. He drove his 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T SE hundreds of miles from Canada to a Pennsylvania car show wearing a factory color so loud that even seasoned Mopar people do a double take, and he tucked a stuffed Pink Panther into the driver’s seat just to make sure nobody missed the joke. The question worth asking is not why he picked this color. It is why more people did not.

A Paint Code Most Dodge Buyers Never Saw

The car wears FM3 Panther Pink, a factory-order color Dodge offered on its E-body and A-body lines but one that required a special request — most 1970 Challenger buyers stuck with the safer High Impact palette of Plum Crazy or Go Mango, which shared the same neon-bright marketing push but drew far more takers. Katarynchuk’s Challenger pairs the pink with a magenta side stripe, a combination the host on My Car Story with Lou Costabile calls one of a kind. Under the hood sits a 383 cubic inch V8 backed by a 4-speed manual transmission — a mid-tier engine choice for the R/T SE package, but one that keeps the car light on its feet compared to the 440 and Hemi cars that usually steal the spotlight at shows like Carlisle.

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Nineteen Years With One Careful Owner

Katarynchuk has owned this Challenger since 2001, which by muscle car standards makes him closer to a caretaker than a collector flipping cars for profit. Viewers who watched the episode filmed at Carlisle Events on July 14, 2017 pointed out just how far he had traveled to show it off, with several commenters noting the effort of hauling a delicate, decades-old car from Canada into the United States for a single weekend event. That kind of commitment tends to separate real enthusiasts from investors — someone chasing resale value does not put miles on a car this rare, they trailer it and hope nothing chips the paint. Katarynchuk instead treats the Challenger like it is meant to be seen and driven.

Why Carlisle Events Draws Cars Like This

Carlisle, Pennsylvania has hosted some of the largest Mopar-specific gatherings in the country for decades, drawing everything from unrestored barn finds to concours-level restorations onto the same show field. It is the kind of event where a stock 383 Challenger can share space with a documented Hemi car and still turn heads, simply because of a paint code nobody else ordered. For a car like this Panther Pink R/T SE, Carlisle is not just a place to park and collect a trophy — it is one of the few venues where the surrounding crowd actually understands what they are looking at, appreciating a rare color combination the same way a numbers-matching engine bay gets appreciated elsewhere.

The R/T SE Package, Explained

The R/T SE designation added a vinyl roof, wider bodyside molding, and additional interior trim on top of the standard R/T’s performance hardware, giving buyers a slightly more upscale take on Dodge’s mid-size muscle car. It was not the ultra-rare Hemi-powered halo car, but the 383 four-barrel was still rated at 335 horsepower from the factory, enough to make the Challenger genuinely quick without the maintenance headaches that come with a big-block Hemi. Paired with a 4-speed manual, Katarynchuk’s car represents the sweet spot a lot of period buyers actually chose — strong performance, manageable running costs, and a driving experience built around rowing your own gears rather than leaning on an automatic.

Not Officially a One-Year Color

One misconception around Panther Pink is that it only appeared for a single model year. Longtime Mopar enthusiasts in the comments corrected that record, noting the color remained orderable through the early 1970s under different paint codes, and that Canadian-market Mopars in particular carried a disproportionate share of the pink and other High Impact-adjacent hues compared to American-market cars. That detail matters here specifically because Katarynchuk’s car and its Canadian ownership history line up with that pattern, adding a layer of regional context to why this exact color combination survived instead of getting repainted a more conventional shade decades ago.

A Sound Viewers Keep Coming Back To

Beyond the paint, the reaction to this episode has consistently centered on the engine note itself — commenters return specifically to praise how the 383 sounds at idle and under throttle, a detail that does not always come through in still photos of a show car parked on a field. That combination of a genuinely rare factory color and an engine that still sounds the way it did rolling off the assembly line in 1970 is part of why this particular Challenger keeps getting singled out among the hundreds of cars My Car Story with Lou Costabile has featured from Carlisle over the years.

What Happens to Cars Like This Next

Cars this specific tend to follow one of two paths: they get bought by a collector who locks them away as an investment, or they stay with an owner who keeps driving them until the paint finally does need touching up. Katarynchuk’s approach, based on nearly two decades of ownership and a willingness to drive the car well outside his home country, suggests this Challenger is firmly in the second category. For Mopar fans hoping rare factory colors like FM3 Panther Pink stay visible and driven rather than disappearing into private collections, that is about as good an outcome as this car could have.

A Small Detail That Says a Lot

The stuffed Pink Panther that rides in the driver’s seat during the episode is not a factory feature, obviously, but it says something about how Katarynchuk approaches ownership of a genuinely unusual car — he is not precious about it in the way some owners get about a six-figure Hemi restoration. It is a small, funny touch that fits the personality of a Panther Pink Challenger better than a serious trophy display ever could, and it is exactly the kind of detail that turns a rare color-code curiosity into a car people actually remember after walking the show field.

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