This 1970 Dodge Super Bee wears a front end Dodge built for exactly one model year. Under the hood, a 440 running three carburetors was engineered to chase Hemi-level bragging rights for a lot less money. Here’s the story behind both decisions — and why neither one stuck around.
Dodge changed the front end of its budget muscle car so dramatically in 1970 that buyers either loved it or hated it on sight — and then Dodge never built another one like it. A twin-loop chrome bumper wrapped around paired headlights for exactly one model year before the styling department moved on for good. Hidden behind that one-year face on this Top Banana Yellow 1970 Super Bee is an even bigger surprise: a 440 wearing three carburetors instead of one, engineered specifically to chase Hemi-level bragging rights for a lot less money. This is the car Dodge built for buyers who wanted the attention without the price tag — and it very nearly delivered exactly that.
The Front End Dodge Only Built for One Year
Muscle Car of the Week’s profile of this particular Super Bee comes from the Brothers Collection, and the car is hard to miss for reasons beyond the engine bay. Finished in Top Banana Yellow with a white interior and bold bumblebee tail stripes, it’s the kind of car its own owners admit was never meant to blend in. The video walks through the cabin details that collectors still chase today — the Tic-Toc-Tach mounted on the dash, the pistol-grip Hurst shifter, and the Ramcharger cold-air hood that fed the engine below.
What the video doesn’t have to explain to anyone who grew up around these cars is why the 440 Six Pack badge on the hood still causes a stir at a gas station fifty-plus years later. Three visible carburetor snorkels poking through a hood scoop were Dodge’s way of advertising exactly what was under there, and in 1970 that was still a novelty most manufacturers hadn’t caught up to. It’s a detail that draws a crowd every time the hood goes up, and the walkaround lingers on it for good reason. Enthusiasts who grew up around these cars will tell you the appeal was never subtle — the whole package, from the stripes to the hood scoop to the exhaust note at idle, was built to be noticed.
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Dodge’s Cheaper Way to Build a Muscle Car
The Super Bee didn’t start as a style exercise. Dodge launched it in 1968 as a direct answer to the Plymouth Road Runner: take a mid-size car, strip out the luxury trim, drop in a big-block engine, and sell the whole package for less than a fully loaded Charger or Coronet R/T. Where the Charger was Dodge’s flagship muscle coupe, the Super Bee rode on the plainer Coronet platform — cheaper to build, lighter to drive, and aimed squarely at buyers who wanted performance first and chrome trim a distant second.
For 1970, Dodge gave the Coronet-based Super Bee a front end nobody had seen before and nobody would see again. Chrome grilles looped twin-style around each headlight, joined by a center divider running down from the leading edge of a reworked hood and fenders. Dodge’s own public relations team nicknamed the look the car’s “bumblebee wings.” Reaction from dealers and buyers was split right down the middle — some saw a daring facelift, others saw a car trying too hard — and by the next model year the Coronet-based Super Bee was retired entirely. For 1971, Dodge moved the Super Bee name onto the Charger platform with a completely different face, while the plainer Coronet line itself drifted toward family-sedan duty. The 1970 twin-loop Coronet Super Bee was a one-model-year experiment, full stop.
Dodge wasn’t the only brand betting that a bold, budget-friendly package could move as many units as outright displacement. Pontiac ran the same playbook with its Judge package on the GTO, chasing flash and attitude over raw spec-sheet numbers — and one of those cars surfaced recently after decades hidden away, with a surprising wrinkle of its own.
Three Carburetors, One Mission: Beat Cars That Cost More
Under that one-year-only hood sat the real story: the 440 Six Pack. Dodge engineers took the standard 440 cubic-inch V8 and replaced its single four-barrel Carter carburetor with three Holley two-barrels perched on an Edelbrock Hi-Riser intake manifold. The outer two carburetors stayed closed at light throttle for everyday drivability, then snapped open together under hard acceleration — giving the Six Pack both a tame daily-driver personality and a factory-built ambush switch most owners rarely got to use to its full potential on public roads. Factory ratings put the engine at 390 horsepower at 4,700 rpm and 490 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm, backed by 10.5:1 compression pistons, beefed-up connecting rods, and valve springs borrowed straight from the 426 Hemi parts bin. It still trailed the Hemi’s factory-rated 425 horsepower, but it undercut the Hemi on both weight and price — the Six Pack option ran roughly $463 on top of a $3,074 base price, a few hundred dollars cheaper than checking the Hemi box.
That price gap mattered more than it might sound. Dodge built around 15,506 Super Bees for 1970, and only about 1,268 of them left the factory with the 440 Six Pack — versus a mere 42 cars ordered with the 426 Hemi. The math tells its own story: for the overwhelming majority of buyers who wanted real big-block muscle without a Hemi-sized bill, the Six Pack was the sweet spot, and it still is among collectors today. A Hemi car commands Hemi money. A well-documented Six Pack car like this Top Banana Yellow example gets you most of the performance story at a fraction of the price of admission.
Fifty-plus years on, that combination of one-year styling and a factory-built sleeper engine is exactly why cars like this one command attention at shows and auctions. The color alone narrows the field — Top Banana Yellow with a white interior wasn’t a common order, and surviving examples in that combination are harder to find than the production numbers alone suggest. Add the one-year-only grille, and this particular Super Bee checks boxes that even some six-figure muscle cars can’t claim: genuine rarity on two separate fronts, not just one. The Super Bee was never supposed to be the car everyone remembered. For one year, Dodge built it to be impossible to ignore anyway.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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