What’s Rutledge Wood bringing on Power Tour 2017?

Rutledge Wood’s ride for HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 was a white 1970 Dodge Charger with Petty Racing history: Kyle Petty bought it as a teenager and had its quarters widened by the Petty Enterprises fab shop, it passed to his son Austin, and it still carries its original 383 and four-speed. Wood added Wilwood brakes and a prototype RideTech StreetGrip suspension for a thousand miles of driving. Read on to find out why this Charger out-ranks nearly everything on the tour.

Some cars arrive at a cruise and quietly out-rank everything parked around them, and it has nothing to do with paint depth or the size of the wheels. Rutledge Wood’s ride for HOT ROD Power Tour 2017 was a white 1970 Dodge Charger with a story that most Mopar people would trade a garage full of trophies for. Long before a television host owned it, this Charger belonged to a teenager who spent his afternoons hanging around a race shop that built winning stock cars for his father. That teenager was Kyle Petty, and the shop was Petty Enterprises. What does a car with that bloodline look like nearly five decades on, and what did it take to make it ready for a thousand miles of Power Tour?

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Power Tour’s Most Familiar Face

Rutledge Wood has been one of HOT ROD Power Tour’s most visible ambassadors, showing up on the tour so many times that regulars have lost count, and bringing something different each year. Known to a wide audience from his television work in motorsports and car culture, he has always treated the tour the way the Long Haulers do: drive it, do not trailer it. That reputation is why his choice of car draws attention every summer. When someone with access to nearly anything in the hobby picks a specific machine for a week of hard miles, the pick says something.

A Teenage Petty and a Race Shop

Kyle Petty bought this Charger as a teenager in the 1970s, and it did not stay stock for long. The car was widened with hand-formed sheetmetal to clear a set of fat tires, and that work came out of the same fabrication shop that built the stock cars Richard Petty drove to NASCAR wins. There was no aftermarket widebody kit involved. The flares were shaped by people who fabricated race cars for a living, which explains the level of craftsmanship anyone who has seen the car in person tends to notice first.

Where the Metalwork Came From

Petty Enterprises, the family operation in Level Cross, North Carolina, was one of the most successful teams in stock car racing history during the years Kyle was growing up around it. A shop that could hammer out a body for a superspeedway car had no trouble stretching the quarters on a street Charger. That is the detail that makes this car different from the thousands of modified 1970 Chargers out there: its modifications are period, they are hand-built, and they were done by a crew whose day job was winning races with the same kind of Mopar sheetmetal.

Sold, Bought Back, Handed Down

The Charger’s chain of custody stayed inside the family for decades. Kyle Petty sold the car, later bought it back, and eventually passed it to his son Austin. Austin took the car back to the Petty shop for a freshening of the paint and interior, and it picked up a green stripe across the rear in the process. That kind of documented, single-family history is exactly what collectors of race-connected cars look for, because it means the story can be verified rather than merely told.

Original 383 and a Four-Speed

When Rutledge Wood bought the Charger directly from Austin Petty, it still carried its original 383 big-block and four-speed manual. In an era when many Chargers of this vintage have been converted to Hemis or modern crate engines, keeping the born-with drivetrain preserves the car’s identity as the one a teenage Kyle Petty actually drove. A 383 four-speed B-body is also a thoroughly capable road car, with enough torque for highway cruising and a gearbox that makes a week of driving far more engaging than an automatic.

Built to Drive, Not to Trailer

Power Tour is a week of daily legs that can each run a couple hundred miles, so a car has to stop, steer, and stay cool. Wood added Wilwood brakes and a prototype RideTech StreetGrip suspension, upgrades chosen to make the Charger keep pace with modern traffic without altering its character. The philosophy is the pro-touring one applied lightly: leave the drivetrain and the body alone, fix the things a 1970 chassis does poorly, and drive it hard. The result is a historically significant car that is used as intended rather than preserved under a cover.

Why StreetGrip Fits This Car

RideTech’s StreetGrip line is aimed at exactly this kind of owner, someone who wants a meaningful improvement in ride and handling on a stock-height classic without cutting the car up for coilovers. On a widened, big-tire Charger, that means better control of the body over rough pavement and more confidence in the corners while keeping the stance the Petty shop gave it decades ago. Running a prototype set on Power Tour is also a real-world test: a thousand miles of varied road will find any weakness a shop test cannot.

What the Choice Says About the Owner

Rutledge Wood could have shown up in a brand-new Hellcat or a six-figure restomod. Instead he chose a Charger with a genuine Petty Racing chain of custody, an original drivetrain, and just enough modern hardware to make it reliable. That choice reflects what a lot of serious enthusiasts value now: provenance and honesty over shine. A car that has been in one racing family’s orbit for most of its life, and that still wears their handiwork, is worth more to the right person than any amount of fresh paint.

The Charger in Context

The 1970 Charger sits at the peak of the second-generation B-body, the last year of the styling that made the Charger a cultural icon. Most surviving examples that draw crowds are Hemi or 440 cars restored to factory specification. This one draws crowds for the opposite reason. It was modified almost from new, by a famous race shop, and it has never pretended to be a numbers-matching showpiece. In a hobby that often prizes originality above all, a well-documented modified car with a story this good is its own kind of rare.

A Pedigree Most Mopar Fans Would Envy

Ask around any Power Tour stop and you will find owners who can tell you their car’s story in a sentence. Very few can say a teenage Kyle Petty widened the quarters using the Petty Enterprises fab shop, that the car was passed to Austin Petty and freshened in the same building, and that it still runs the 383 and four-speed it was bought with. Rutledge Wood’s Charger is that rare exception, and for a week every summer it gets to do what it was built for: put on miles.

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