A 1968 Dodge Super Bee, one of only 125 built with the 426 Hemi, takes on a 1971 Corvette LS6, one of just 188 built that year, in a genuinely close quarter-mile race decided as much by gearing as by raw power. But the real story lives in the comments, where one viewer’s sprawling account of a mid-1960s neighborhood muscle car arms race, complete with a State Trooper who kept losing his own street races, has become something close to local legend. Watch the run, then read the full story below it.
One comment on this video is longer than most magazine articles, and it does not mention either car in the actual race even once until the very end. Instead, it tells the story of an entire neighborhood, a decade of driveway one-upmanship, a State Trooper’s Plymouth cruiser, and a stack of marriages that eventually put a stop to all of it. That comment has nothing directly to do with the two rare survivors lined up on this particular strip – and everything to do with why races like this one still matter to the people who actually lived through the era these cars came from.
Two of the Rarest Factory Options Ever Built
The two cars settling this particular quarter-mile argument are both seriously rare survivors of their respective factories’ most extreme performance packages. The Dodge is a 1968 Super Bee built with the 426 Hemi option, a combination so uncommon that only 125 Hemi Super Bees left the factory that entire model year, just 31 of those with the four-speed. Its opponent is a 1971 Corvette equipped with the LS6 454, Chevrolet’s top performance option for the Corvette that year and produced in similarly small numbers – just 188 units total.
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What Made Both Engines the Absolute Ceiling
Both engines represent the absolute ceiling of what their respective manufacturers were willing to put into a production car by the early 1970s. The Hemi’s dual-quad, hemispherical-chamber design needed no introduction even in period, carrying a reputation for brutal low-end squat and a factory rating that most owners and historians still consider conservative. The LS6’s solid-lifter 454 pushed the Corvette’s chassis and drivetrain to their absolute limit, arriving right as GM’s own engineering teams were beginning to wind performance back in response to insurance pressure and looming emissions standards. Solid-lifter valvetrains like the one in this LS6 also required more frequent, more precise maintenance than a typical hydraulic-lifter big block, a maintenance burden that many period owners underestimated until their engine started telling them otherwise.
Why Gearing Decided This Race
What actually decided the race, according to viewers who watched closely, came down to rear gearing more than raw output. One commenter pointed out plainly that the gear ratios clearly played a role in the outcome, noting a preference for the Super Bee while still respecting what the Corvette brought to the table. That kind of nuanced read, crediting the loser for a genuinely competitive showing rather than writing it off, runs through nearly every comment on this video.
A Neighborhood’s Muscle Car Arms Race Begins
Then there is the comment that has become something close to a local legend in its own right. A viewer describes growing up on a street in the mid-to-late 1960s where an escalating chain of muscle car purchases played out in real time among the neighborhood’s newly employed, still-living-at-home young men. A 1966 GTO started it, credited by the commenter as essentially the car that launched the entire muscle car era on that street. A basic, no-frills 383 Road Runner beat it consistently. A Z-28 replaced the GTO. A 454 Chevelle occasionally beat the Belvedere. And a local State Trooper, driving his department-issued Plymouth Fury with a 440 under the hood, raced them both and lost to each.
The Engine That Went to California and Came Back
The story keeps going. One of the neighborhood’s cars, a 67 Belvedere with a 440, disappeared from its driveway for two months after the owner shipped its engine to a specialist drag-race engine builder in California – a serious, expensive undertaking for a teenager or young adult in that era, sent all the way from Louisiana. When the engine came back, blueprinted and reworked, the Belvedere reportedly demolished the Chevelle that had briefly held the neighborhood’s unofficial title, ending the entire one-upmanship contest in a single run.
How the Whole Contest Finally Ended
The commenter closes the story with a detail that lands harder than any horsepower figure could: the entire neighborhood arms race eventually ended not because anyone lost interest, but because the young men involved got married, and their new wives decided their husbands were having entirely too much fun. Every car, eventually, got sold off for something more practical. It is a small, specific, deeply human ending to a story about machines, and it is the kind of firsthand history that no factory brochure or auction listing will ever capture.
Why This Comment Matters More Than the Spec Sheet
That comment is worth dwelling on because it captures something the spec sheets for either the Super Bee or the Corvette in this actual video cannot: these cars were never really about the numbers on a dyno sheet or a production count. They were about a specific, lived experience of being young in a specific decade, with access to genuinely dangerous amounts of horsepower and a driveway full of friends willing to test it against each other on public streets, with occasionally sympathetic law enforcement looking the other way. That is not nostalgia talking either – it is a documented pattern across dozens of similar comment threads on this channel, where viewers who actually lived through the muscle car era consistently offer more specific, more verifiable detail than any factory brochure ever printed.
Just How Rare Both Survivors Really Are
Both cars in this actual race carry serious collector value today precisely because so few survived in original condition. A 125-unit production run for the Hemi Super Bee and a 188-unit run for the 1971 LS6 Corvette both represent options that most period buyers simply could not justify or afford, which is exactly why finding two of them, running hard against each other on a modern strip rather than trailered to a static show, remains a genuinely rare thing to witness.
What to Watch, and What to Read Afterward
Watch the actual race for what it is, a legitimately close fight between two of the rarest factory options either manufacturer ever built. Then read the comments, because somewhere in that thread is a story about an entire vanished era of American car culture, told by someone who was actually there for it.
Watch the full video and tell us what you think – comments are open below.
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Doug White
hemi bee was almost a second faster
Mopar hemi will stomp all over the vette
No way! Line em back up
Sweet Super Bee.
Since the Super Bee is a 1968, how about run it against a 1968 L88 Vette? 426 vs 427, 1968 vs 1968. 1971 all the horsepower had been su ked out of the 454. Not even a close comparison. Smh
Ls6 70 model. 450 hp
You mean a 2 seat sports car VS a 6 seat Muscle car ??? Cry baby Gov Motors Loser LOL !!!!!
A short fiberglass light weight 2 door 2 seater sports car vs a long body all steel 5-6 seater muscle car. I get that they sucked some power out but its still a vet with a big block
Or put it up against a 70 LS6 Chevelle.
Wow!! I see the Mopar guys get a little whiney when you try and match up same engine/year cars. Lol. Even if you put the L88 in a Chevelle or Camaro, the result would still be a win for Chevy.
Erik Brink, they had the 454 till 1975. It was nothing but a iron brick after 1970. HP was down at least 50%.
Typical, the 1970 Chevelle LS-6 454 had to spot a Hemi Cuda a 10th of a second in pure stock NHRA
Just sayin you could also get the LS-6 in the vette in ’70 rated @460
Hemi!
Mike Coleman send him a email
And the bee is twice as long, and ALL STEEL….no fuckin glass there!
Mopar!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I thought it was going to boil down to horsepower/weight ratio.
The vetted should’ve beat the mopar,since short wheel base not fiberglass body with 454 ci. But that Hemi with top power always get the job done ,mopar or no car baby..
had a friend with a 69 roadrunner 383 magnum , go against a 454 69 chevelle ate that chevelle, an shit out a camaro 2 out of 3
Luv that Hemi power.
Enough said,smells like a victory to me
Okay, now let’s gp to the road racing course. Bye bye, Super Bee.
Figured the hemi would do the trick but the vette ain’t no slouch either. How about a GSX against the hemi next time?
A12 package 4spd
Victory baaaaby
Awesome
Hemi rules…. that sound….
Love them MOPARs. It’s Mopar or nocar for me. 22016 RAM REBEL & 2016 CHALLENGER Scatpack 507 hp!
Chris Stallard
Not fair, in 71 GM lowered the compression on all of their high performance engines while Mopar did not. The Hemi still has 10 1/4 to 1 while the Chevy had 8.5 to 1.
lemme drive the vette…..different story