BARN FIND !! 1970 Challenger 340 T/A Six Pack – Origin of the Hellcat? Road Test TV

A barn find 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A has been sitting untouched for years, its original 340 cubic inch Six Pack engine still intact under the hood. Dodge built only 2,399 T/A Challengers that year, and viewers can’t even agree on the factory paint color, some call it Panther Pink, others Plum Crazy Purple. The video poses a pointed question: would you trade this original for a modern Hellcat? Most commenters say no.

Pink wasn’t exactly the color muscle car buyers were fighting over in 1970, and that’s part of why almost nobody could immediately agree on it in the comments. Some viewers were positive it’s called Panther Pink, others assumed Plum Crazy Purple until the color code settled the argument. Whatever you call it, this barn find 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A has been sitting untouched for years, its 340 cubic inch Six Pack engine intact under a hood nobody bothered to open. Dodge only built 2,399 of these T/A Challengers that year, and the video’s title asks a pointed question: is this the true origin of today’s Hellcat? So which wins, the six-pack-fed original or the 707-horsepower modern reboot built to chase its reputation?

Panther Pink or Plum Crazy? The Comments Couldn’t Agree

Scroll through the comments and you’ll find a genuine debate breaking out over the exact factory color on this Challenger. A handful of viewers insisted it had to be Plum Crazy Purple, Dodge’s most famous High Impact color and the one most casual fans remember first. Others were adamant it’s actually Panther Pink, a shade Dodge offered for exactly one model year, 1970, before quietly dropping it from the color chart. Multiple commenters backed Panther Pink specifically, and the consistency of that answer across several separate replies makes it the more credible read. Either way, both colors belonged to Chrysler’s short-lived High Impact paint program, a lineup of deliberately loud factory colors built to stand out on dealer lots during the peak of the muscle car wars, and finding one still wearing its original coat decades later is rare on its own.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

← Prev Next →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Six Pack That Made the T/A Different

The T/A designation wasn’t just a trim badge, it meant this Challenger came standard with Chrysler’s 340 cubic inch small block fed by three two-barrel Holley carburetors, a setup most enthusiasts just call the Six Pack. Rated at 290 horsepower on paper, the Six Pack 340 was notoriously underrated from the factory and ran considerably harder than its numbers suggested, which is exactly why Dodge built the T/A package in the first place, to homologate the car for Trans-Am road racing, where the small block’s high-revving nature and lighter front end made it more competitive than the bigger 383 and 440 engines that weighed the nose down. This barn find still carries its original 340 Six Pack setup untouched, which for T/A collectors is close to the whole ballgame.

1 of 2,399 – and Most of the 70,000 Weren’t T/As

Dodge built well over 70,000 Challengers for the 1970 model year, but only 2,399 of them wore the T/A package, which limited the run specifically to move Trans-Am homologation numbers rather than chase mainstream sales. That scarcity is a big part of why T/A Challengers command a premium over standard SE and R/T models today, even though all three shared the same basic platform. The T/A’s unique fiberglass hood scoop, side-exit exhaust, and matte black hood treatment set it apart visually from the moment it left the factory, and those details are still intact on this barn find example, unmolested by whatever decades of storage it went through before the camera showed up.

Sitting for Years, and All the Better For It

Like a lot of the best surviving muscle cars, this Challenger owes its condition to neglect rather than careful stewardship. It sat somewhere out of sight long enough to earn the barn find label, untouched by the modifications, repaints, and drivetrain swaps that claimed so many other T/As during the decades when 1970s muscle cars were cheap and unfashionable. That kind of benign neglect is oddly protective, a car nobody wants to drive or sell is also a car nobody bothers to hack apart for parts or resto-mod projects. The tradeoff is obvious in the video, a layer of dust and grime covers a car that’s mechanically closer to its original 1970 spec than most driven survivors will ever be again.

Restore It or Just Clean It Up?

The comments split hard on what should happen next. Some viewers pushed for a full restoration, arguing that a car this rare deserves to look factory-fresh again inside and out. Others pushed back hard, insisting the smarter move is to simply clean and mechanically preserve the car exactly as it sits, leaving the original paint, interior, and drivetrain alone rather than risk erasing decades of untouched history in the name of shine. That second camp tends to win these arguments among serious Mopar collectors these days, since a numbers-matching, unrestored T/A is worth more to many buyers precisely because it hasn’t been touched, a mirror image of the logic that makes low-mile survivor cars so valuable.

How Do You Even Value a Car Like This?

Nobody in the comments landed on a firm number for what this Challenger is worth in its current state, and that’s not surprising, unrestored T/A Six Packs rarely trade often enough to establish a clean market price. Clean, driver-quality T/A Challengers with the 340 Six Pack have sold in the six-figure range at major Mopar auctions in recent years, and a genuinely original barn find example with intact numbers-matching components would likely land at the high end of that range, or above it, once collectors get a proper look at the drivetrain and body underneath the dust. Rarity plus originality is usually the formula that pushes muscle car prices past what spec sheets alone would suggest.

Would You Trade It for a New Hellcat?

The video’s own question lingers through the comments: would you rather have this original T/A Six Pack or a brand new Hellcat? It’s not really a fair fight on paper, a modern Hellcat produces well over twice the horsepower of the 340 Six Pack and comes with a warranty, but almost nobody in the comments takes the bait. The consensus leans overwhelmingly toward keeping the original 1970 car, less for outright performance than for what it represents, an unrepeatable slice of Trans-Am homologation history that no modern factory reissue, however powerful, can actually replicate. Dodge itself leaned into that connection when it named its modern high-output Challengers Hellcats, borrowing the outlaw reputation the T/A and its siblings built decades earlier on street corners and drag strips.

A Barn Find That Still Has Secrets Left to Tell

Every barn find video ends the same way, with more questions than answers. Where exactly did this Challenger sit for all those years? Who owned it originally, and why did they park a Trans-Am homologation special and simply walk away? The comments don’t settle any of that, but they do agree on one thing: whatever happens to this T/A next, from full restoration to careful preservation, the car has already outlasted the muscle car era it was built to represent, and it’s sitting there, Six Pack intact, still ready to answer the only question that matters once the dust gets wiped off.

Check out the full video above and let us know what you think in the comments.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Related posts:

1971 Dodge Challenger 383 – vintage road test Rare Barn Find !! 1971 Cuda 440-6 Barrel – 1 of 17 V-Code Convertibles Built – Road Test TV BARN FIND !! RARE 70 426 Hemi Road Runner – 1 of 44 – 1st 70 Road Runner – Road Test TV 1970 Dodge Challenger RT Commercial Ford Mustang Show – The Best Mustang cars – Newest models and from 60’s 70’s Muscle Car Memes: Go green… Rare 426 Hemi Road Runner vs Olds 442 W-30 – 1/4 Mile Drag Race Video- Road Test TV 426 Hemi Cuda vs 426 Hemi Coronet R/T – 1/4 mile drag race video – Road Test TV Only 674 original miles !! Superbird !!! Original Paint / Unrestored – Road Test TV 1969 AMX – vintage road test