Dodge Built Only 22 Hemi Super Bees in 1971 – This One Also Has the Sunroof Almost Nobody Ordered

Dodge built just 22 Super Bees with the 426 Hemi in 1971, and only 9 of the entire model year got a factory power sunroof. This Hemi Orange survivor in the Brothers Collection somehow has both — see what a four-speed, sunroof-equipped Hemi Super Bee actually looks like up close.

Chrysler built 5,054 Dodge Super Bees for 1971, the model’s final year on the books, and almost none of them looked anything like this one. Twenty-two buyers spent roughly $880 to add the 426 Hemi under the hood — already a number so small it barely registers against total production. Somewhere in that handful sits an even stranger combination: a factory power sunroof, an option so rare that Chrysler built only 9 of them across every engine offered that year. This particular 1971 Super Bee, finished in Hemi Orange with a stick-shift 4-speed and that same sunroof cut into its roof, is currently living in the Brothers Collection, and MuscleCarOfTheWeek got a rare look at what happens when two vanishingly small production runs collide in a single car. Whether it’s the rarest Super Bee ever built is still an open question — but it’s hard to imagine a stronger candidate.

The MuscleCarOfTheWeek crew walks through this ’71 Super Bee inch by inch, and the tour makes clear why this one stopped them in their tracks. It’s optioned with the full Hemi package: a 4-speed manual and pistol-grip shifter, a 150-mph speedometer, an 8,000-rpm tachometer, and twin Carter AFB four-barrels feeding the 426 through a functional Ramcharger hood scoop. Add power steering, power brakes, power windows, a Music Master AM radio, and the switch for that electric sunroof overhead, and you’re looking at a Super Bee that left the factory about as loaded as Dodge would allow.

What sells the story, though, is the presenter’s own reaction to the sunroof — because even a channel built entirely around rare muscle cars treats it as a genuine surprise. Several viewers in the comments say the same thing: they had no idea Chrysler ever offered a factory power sunroof on a B-body muscle car, let alone one wearing a 426 Hemi. That reaction is the whole point of a car like this — it rewrites what people think they already know about how far Dodge would go to option out a Super Bee.

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The Redesign That Divided Mopar Fans

1971 wasn’t just the Super Bee’s last year on the market — it was also the year Dodge moved the nameplate onto a completely redesigned Charger platform. Gone was the long, sharp-edged Charger body that had defined 1968 through 1970; in its place came a shorter but wider car with a pronounced long-nose, short-deck profile, pillarless side glass, and a split front bumper that hid the headlights. The look split opinion among Mopar buyers the moment it landed, and depending on who you ask, it still does today. What isn’t up for debate is that the ’71 Charger’s fastback-ish roofline and low beltline gave the Super Bee a genuinely different personality than the boxier cars that came before it — more grand-tourer, less bruiser, even with a 426 Hemi sitting under the hood.

The Super Bee itself had started life in 1968 as Dodge’s answer to the Plymouth Road Runner — a stripped-down, budget-focused muscle car built around big-block power rather than options and chrome. By 1971, that formula was running out of room. Rising insurance premiums on high-horsepower cars, tightening emissions regulations, and a market that was already drifting toward personal luxury coupes were closing in on the entire muscle car segment, and the Super Bee wouldn’t survive to see a 1972 model year. Dodge folded what remained of the nameplate into the Charger Rallye lineup after this, which makes every 1971 Super Bee — Hemi or not — the last of its kind.

Dodge wasn’t alone in feeling that squeeze. Plymouth’s Road Runner, Chevrolet’s Chevelle SS, and Pontiac’s GTO were all wrestling with the same combination of insurance surcharges and shrinking big-block orders heading into 1971, and every one of those nameplates would look dramatically different — or disappear outright — within a few years. The Super Bee’s move to the Charger body wasn’t just a styling refresh; it was Dodge betting that a more refined, road-going muscle car could survive where the stripped-down econo-racer approach of 1968 couldn’t. History didn’t give that bet much time to prove itself, but the handful of Hemi and sunroof-equipped survivors from this final year are the clearest evidence of how far Dodge was still willing to go for buyers chasing something special.

22 Hemis, 9 Sunroofs, and the Math That Makes This Car Nearly Impossible

The production numbers tell the real story. Of the 5,054 Super Bees Dodge built for 1971, only 22 left the factory with the 426 Hemi — 13 paired with automatics and 9, like this one, with the 4-speed manual and its distinctive pistol-grip shifter. That already put a Hemi Super Bee well outside the reach of a typical buyer. Now layer on the sunroof: Chrysler built just 9 power-sunroof Super Bees across every engine offered that year, from the base 340 up through the 440 Six Pack and the Hemi.

MuscleCarOfTheWeek’s host poses the obvious follow-up question in the video: of the 9 Hemi 4-speed cars, how many also got the sunroof? Nobody involved with the car seems to have a confirmed answer, and that ambiguity is part of what makes a verified example like this one worth stopping for — it sits at the intersection of two production runs so small that Dodge’s own paperwork barely tracked the overlap.

What Made This Combination So Expensive to Order

Layering a roughly $500 sunroof option onto an already-expensive Hemi package wasn’t a casual decision in 1971. The Hemi alone added roughly $880 to a Super Bee’s window sticker, instantly making it one of the priciest single options Dodge sold that year. The sunroof carried its own hidden cost, too — Chrysler mandated the full vinyl top on any car ordered with it, which is why this particular Super Bee wears a blacked-out hood and a white vinyl roof over its Hemi Orange paint. Stack both options on top of a base price already north of $3,000, and a buyer checking every box was signing up for one of the most expensive Super Bees Dodge ever built.

Underneath the options list, this is still very much a Hemi car. The 426 was factory-rated at 425 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 490 lb-ft of torque at 4,000 rpm — gross figures typical of the era’s more generous horsepower claims, though still enough to make the Super Bee one of the quickest cars Dodge sold. A Dana 60 rear axle handles that torque, leaf springs keep it planted, and the Charger’s torsion-bar front suspension with a sway bar gives it a ride the video’s host describes as taut but comfortable rather than punishing. Add 15-inch Rally wheels wrapped in Goodyear Polyglas GTs and the standout dual exhaust tips — fans call them “Machine Gun” tips, Dodge called them Exhaust Bright Tips — and it’s a car built to be driven hard, not just displayed in a garage.

Why Collectors Still Chase Numbers Like These

Hemi-powered muscle cars from this era regularly draw six-figure bids when they cross the block at major auctions like Mecum and Barrett-Jackson, and documented 4-speed cars with verifiable build sheets and fender tags tend to command the strongest premiums of all. A 1971 Super Bee carrying both a numbers-matching Hemi and one of only 9 known factory sunroofs isn’t just rare on paper — it’s the kind of car that collectors spend years hunting for and rarely find. That scarcity is exactly why a channel built around profiling unusual muscle cars every single week still treated this one as something special.

How Buyers Verify a Car Like This

Claims of rarity are cheap; documentation is what actually separates a real numbers-matching Hemi Super Bee from a well-built clone. Every Mopar from this era carries a fender tag stamped with build codes for engine, transmission, exterior color, and factory options — including the sunroof — along with a broadcast sheet that traveled with the car down the assembly line. Collectors cross-reference those codes against the VIN and, where possible, Chrysler’s own production records before taking a seller’s word for it. For a car this rare, that paperwork isn’t optional; it’s the difference between a six-figure Hemi Super Bee and a well-optioned clone wearing the wrong badges.

None of that paperwork chase is unique to Super Bees, either — it’s the same due diligence collectors run on Hemi ’Cudas, Six Pack Road Runners, and any other high-dollar muscle car where the gap between a documented original and an undocumented tribute can run into six figures. What makes the sunroof angle unusual is that it isn’t even listed as a standalone RPO code on most Mopar option sheets from the era, which is part of why so few restorers and appraisers have direct experience verifying one. A car like this one effectively requires two separate authentication trails — one for the drivetrain, one for a body option most Mopar people have never had to research.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.