Dodge Charger 1970 – brutal V8 and exhaust sound!

A 1970 Dodge Charger can hide anything from a mild 318 to a snarling 440 Six Pack under that coke-bottle sheet metal – and the difference shows up the instant the throttle opens. Here’s what separated the base R/T Magnum from the genuinely feared Six Pack option, and why collectors still chase the numbers-matching cars decades later. Real muscle, real history, real reasons to care what’s under this Charger’s hood.

Pop the hood on a 1970 Dodge Charger and you genuinely never know what you’re going to find — and that uncertainty is half the fun of this generation. Some cars from this era hid a mild 318 under that unmistakable coke-bottle sheet metal, built for buyers who just wanted the look. Others, like the one that inspired this post, were built to make grown adults flinch the second the throttle opens up. The second-generation Charger already had one of the meanest silhouettes Detroit ever drew. Back it with the right engine, and it stops being a car and starts being a warning. So what’s actually making that exhaust note, and why does it hit different than a small-block ever could?

The Charger That Redefined Menace

Dodge completely reskinned the Charger for 1968 and by 1970 the formula was fully dialed in — long hood, flying-buttress rear window, and a full-width grille that looked like it was drawn by someone who genuinely wanted to intimidate Camaros at stoplights. The R/T package was the one to have if you wanted the car to back up its looks, adding a heavy-duty suspension, dual exhaust, and a standard 440 Magnum V8 as the base engine — not an option, the base engine. That alone tells you everything about what kind of buyer Dodge was chasing with this body style.

440 Magnum vs. Six Pack — Two Very Different Kinds of Angry

The standard R/T engine was the 440 Magnum, a single four-barrel setup factory-rated at 375 horsepower and good for a 0-60 sprint in roughly seven seconds. Order the 440 Six Pack option, though, and Dodge handed you three two-barrel Holley carburetors stacked on an aluminum intake, bumping the factory rating to 390 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque — a number that still sounds enormous on paper today. Cars with the Six Pack were running the quarter-mile in the high 13s, which for a full-size muscle coupe in 1970 was legitimately quick. That’s the kind of spread that turns a casual Charger conversation into a genuine debate at any car show.

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Why These Numbers Still Matter to Collectors Today

Decades later, the gap between a garden-variety 1970 Charger and a documented R/T with the 440 Six Pack is the difference between a nice driver and a six-figure auction result. Numbers-matching Six Pack cars in good condition are some of the most sought-after B-body Mopars on the market, and for good reason — Dodge only built so many, and fewer still survive with their original drivetrain intact. Whether this particular car is running the Magnum or the Six Pack, that exhaust note is doing exactly what Dodge engineers designed it to do fifty-plus years ago: announce that something serious just showed up.

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