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A Dodge Charger and a Plymouth Road Runner faced off in the amateur Search For Speed league, and the fight wasn’t really about horsepower — it was about which Mopar nameplate has earned the right to more respect. Viewers spent as much time debating the Charger’s eligibility as they did praising the Road Runner’s looks, turning a quarter-mile grudge match into a full-blown argument about muscle car authenticity. The burnout told its own story.
Chrysler built the 426 Hemi to win NASCAR races and had no intention of selling it to the public. A homologation rule forced the company’s hand, and for six model years a lightly civilized race engine was available over the counter to anyone who could afford the option and the insurance. Here is what made the Elephant so effective, what the 425-horsepower rating really hid, and why 1971 was the end of it.
Tom Lembeck owns one of roughly 39 surviving 1969 Dodge Daytona Chargers built with a genuine factory 426 Hemi, and instead of trailering it to shows, he drives it through Chicago traffic and lays rubber in parking lots. Viewers called his willingness to use a seven-figure wing car ‘Hallelujah’-worthy. Once an unsold oddity gathering dust on dealer lots, this NASCAR homologation special is now one of the most coveted Mopars in existence. See what makes Lembeck’s Daytona different.
A 1970 Hemi Cuda, one of just 652 built with the 426 that year, lines up against an even rarer 1967 Hemi Coronet R/T, one of the earliest street-legal Hemi cars Dodge ever sold. Both cars share the same legendary Elephant engine, which means this is less a brand rivalry than a family argument about which chassis and gearing made better use of it. Viewers in the comments have already nicknamed both cars the asphalt elephants. Watch the run and see which body style actually won the argument.
Only twelve people ever ordered a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with a 426 Hemi and a convertible top — and just five came with a manual transmission, like this Plum Crazy Purple example from the Brothers Collection. The factory fender tag tells the whole story, down to the exact rear gear ratio and interior trim code. See how V8TV verifies a claim this rare, one code at a time.
The 1968 Dodge Charger redefined what a Mopar muscle car could look like, but very few left the factory with this exact combination: a 426 Hemi, a four-speed manual, and a paint color believed — though never fully confirmed — to be unique to this single car. Featured as Episode #154 of V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week series and restored with body and paint work commenters specifically praised, this Charger sits at the intersection of several kinds of rarity at once. Watch to see the details that make collectors call this Hemi car a genuine home run.
The triple-carb 440 under this Cuda’s hood was not a casual option. Plymouth built barely 1,700-some of them in 1970, split between four-speed and automatic cars. Here is what made the 440 Six Pack such a rare and serious performance package, and why guessing its value takes more than eyeballing the sheet metal.
A dyno breakdown nearly stops a freshly rebuilt 1967 Plymouth GTX from getting its first real test at Nicks Garage. The 440 big block had already survived a full rebuild, now it just needed the shops own equipment to cooperate. Viewers who tune in for the fix stay for the moment the engine finally comes alive on the dyno. It is a reminder that even a top-tier shop runs into problems most builders never show on camera.
A wheelie wagon and a beat-up Nova lined up for a Wheels Up exhibition run, continuing a tradition that traces back to Bill Golden’s 1965 Little Red Wagon. This piece traces the wheelstander format from its Hemi-powered origins through the Novas that later joined the craze, and explains why the format still draws a crowd more than half a century after it began.
Dodge arrived at the pony car party six years late and compensated by offering more engines than anyone else, from a 383 all the way to the 426 Hemi. The Challenger R/T was the sharp end of that lineup, and the cars that stayed with one family instead of getting flipped or raced into the ground are now the ones collectors chase hardest. Read on for what made the first-generation car special.
This 1968 Plymouth GTX convertible is one of 24 built, not 34, despite what the video’s own description claims elsewhere — and Mopar fans in the comments caught the contradiction. Under the hood, a 426 Hemi rated at 425 horsepower but built for NASCAR carries torque near 500 lb-ft, backed by a rear end reinforced specifically to survive it. One commenter even corrects the entire GTX-versus-Road-Runner origin story. So which details actually hold up?
Put a numbers-matching 1969 Hemi Challenger next to a brand-new Dodge product on the same drag strip, and the horsepower gap alone tells you everything has changed — and also nothing important at all. Read on to find out whether the old-muscle-versus-new-muscle argument was ever really about horsepower at all.
Lou Costabile visits Roanoke Motor Co. in Illinois to see a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird 426 Hemi in Alpine White, pulled straight from dealership owner John Gastman’s personal collection. The car’s 53-pound cast aluminum wing and NASCAR-driven aerodynamics tell only part of the story; according to Gastman, the horn has never even been used. Built to homologate Chrysler’s aero package for racing, fewer than 2,000 street Superbirds exist today. Watch to see why this one has barely been touched since it arrived.
Owner Tom Lembeck has something almost no other collector can claim: a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona in Spring Green Metallic and a 1970 Plymouth Superbird in Vitamin C Orange, both factory 426 Hemi cars, parked side by side in the same collection. Host Lou Costabile walks through exactly what separates NASCAR’s two winged Mopars once you see them together. Watch to see both aero legends compared directly, nose cone to nose cone.