Dodge Only Built 42 Hemi Super Bees in 1970 — The Buyers Who Skipped It Got the Smarter Deal

A Top Banana Yellow 1970 Dodge Super Bee skipped the ultra-rare Hemi for a 440 Six Pack instead — and gave up just 35 horsepower for a fraction of the price. See why collectors now call it the sleeper every Mopar fan should want.

Dodge built exactly 42 Hemi-powered Super Bees in 1970, and for decades collectors have treated that number like a trophy. But talk to the people who actually drove these cars on the street, and a different story comes out: the buyers who walked past the Hemi option and checked the box for the 440 Six Pack instead got nearly all the performance for a fraction of the cost — and arguably an easier car to live with. This bright yellow 1970 Super Bee, pulled from the Brothers Collection for a close-up walkaround, is one of those Six Pack cars, and the comment section under the video keeps calling it the real sleeper of the muscle car era. Under a one-year-only grille Dodge never used again, it hides an engine combination that quietly out-values every six-figure Hemi at the auction block today. The story of why Dodge’s so-called second-best engine might have actually been its smartest one starts with a bee.

A 440 Six-Pack Hiding Under Bumblebee Stripes

The car at the center of the video is a Top Banana Yellow 1970 Dodge Super Bee from the Brothers Collection, finished with a white interior and the bold Bumblebee stripe package that made this generation impossible to miss in a parking lot. The walkaround lingers on the details that separated a Six Pack car from an ordinary Super Bee: the functional Ram Charger hood scoop, the “440 Six Pack” callouts on the flanks, and the fiberglass hood itself, which Dodge fitted specifically to clear the triple-carburetor setup underneath.

Inside, the car carries two details Mopar collectors look for first — the round Tic-Toc-Tach mounted in the dash and the pistol-grip shifter rising out of the console. Neither one changed the car’s performance, but both became shorthand in the muscle car world for a Dodge that meant business, and the video treats them as the small, correct details that separate a real Six Pack Super Bee from a clone built around a lesser engine.

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Why Dodge Built a “Super” B-Body in the First Place

The Super Bee arrived in 1968 as Dodge’s direct answer to the Plymouth Road Runner, which had beaten it to market by using cheap, lightweight styling and a cartoon mascot to sell serious performance at a bargain price. Dodge built its version on the same midsize B-body platform as the Coronet, and the “Bee” in the name was a nod to that B-body designation, dressed up with a cartoon bumblebee mascot of its own. It stayed a two-door-only coupe for its entire three-year run, from 1968 through 1970, before folding into the Charger lineup for 1971.

For 1970, Dodge gave the Super Bee a front end it would use for exactly one model year: a twin-loop chrome bumper and grille arrangement that period advertising nicknamed “bumblebee wings.” Dodge changed the grille again for 1971, which means this look — the one on the car in the video — only ever came on a single year of Super Bees. It is part of why 1970 cars command a premium over the 1968 and 1969 versions today, independent of what engine is under the hood.

The Engine Dodge Buried Behind Its Own Hemi

On paper, the 426 Hemi was always going to win the spec sheet. Dodge rated it at 425 horsepower for 1970, next to 390 horsepower for the 440 Six Pack’s trio of two-barrel carburetors and 335 horsepower for the standard 383. But that 35-horsepower gap between the Six Pack and the Hemi did not come cheap: multiple period sources note that stepping up to the Hemi option pushed the price of a Super Bee up by roughly a third, a jump the Six Pack never asked buyers to make.

The sales numbers show exactly how that math played out. Dodge built around 1,268 Super Bees with the 440 Six Pack in 1970, against just 42 with the Hemi — making the Hemi Super Bee one of the rarest muscle cars Dodge ever produced, and the Six Pack the engine nearly everyone who wanted real performance actually drove home. Dealers rarely stocked Hemi cars at all; most were special-ordered, which meant a buyer who simply wanted to go fast off the lot was steered toward the Six Pack by default, not as a consolation prize.

A Real Sleeper, Even by Muscle Car Standards

Comments on the video from owners back up the sleeper reputation. One viewer described a neighbor’s Six Pack, four-speed Super Bee running high-11-second, low-12-second quarter miles at around 116 mph in full street trim, on 4.30 gears and slicks — numbers that would embarrass plenty of cars that cost far more to build. Another longtime owner recalled ordering his own 440 Six Pack Super Bee new in the early 1970s with a Dana 60 rear axle, power front discs, and the Ram Charger hood, and still talks about missing it decades later. More than one commenter used the exact word “underappreciated” to describe the car, a theme that comes up again and again whenever the 1970 Super Bee gets compared to its flashier Hemi sibling or its Plymouth cousin, the Road Runner.

That reputation is not just nostalgia talking. The 440 Six Pack’s triple two-barrel setup was designed to behave like a mild-mannered single carburetor around town, with the outer two carbs staying closed until the throttle opened wide — at which point all three dumped fuel at once and the car woke up. It is the kind of engineering that let a Super Bee owner drive to work all week and still humiliate faster-looking cars at a stoplight on the weekend.

What a 440 Six Pack Super Bee Is Worth Today

Valuation guides have priced a solid 1970 Super Bee in the low $30,000s, with four-speed cars commanding a further 15 to 25 percent on top of that. Individual 440 Six Pack coupes in strong condition have sold at auction in the high $30,000s to high $40,000s, while documented Hemi cars — when one of the 42 actually comes up for sale — can approach six figures. That is still a wide gap, but it is nowhere near as wide as the horsepower difference would suggest, which is exactly the point the video’s comment section keeps making.

For anyone shopping for one, the fender tag and VIN are the only way to confirm a genuine Six Pack car rather than a 383 or 440 four-barrel car dressed up to look the part after the fact — the stripes, scoop, and badges are all reproduction parts that bolt onto any 1970 Super Bee. A documented build sheet or broadcast sheet, where one survives, is worth more to a buyer than any amount of fresh paint.

Rust is the other thing to check before falling for the color and the stripes. B-body Mopars from this era are notorious for trunk floor, quarter panel, and torsion bar crossmember corrosion, and a seller asking Six Pack or Hemi money for a car with filler in those areas is asking for a car that is worth closer to base-383 pricing once the real structure is accounted for. A thorough inspection underneath, not just a glance at the stripes, is what separates a smart buy from an expensive lesson.

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