Late ‘60s Dodge Chargers look tough. And mean. And nasty. Which made the black R/T 440 Charger in that classic car chase movie, Bullitt, the perfect choice for the villain’s car, as opposed to McQueen’s sleek and quick ’68 GT Mustang.
Cop McQueen was the prey/good guy and the two bad guys in the Charger (as Mafia hitmen they were, perhaps the original Men in Black) were on a mission to take him out to protect their boss.
The nearly 11-minute chase scene over the undercarriage-grinding humps and bumps of San Francisco’s rollercoaster streets, set a benchmark for the genre and in my opinion at least as far as authenticity goes, has never been matched (see The Chase For Sales sidebar at the bottom of the page).
Which brings us to Chrysler fan Harry’s Mopar, the second generation ’68 Charger resetting the dimensions for muscle cars of the era, with its nearly 3m wheelbase one of the longest in the business.
It was the most ‘muscular’ of the factory hot rods of the time, its broad, aggressive shoulders and vast bonnet projecting a real tough guy persona. And the R/T version (for Road and Track) had various suspension, brake and performance upgrades in line with its designation.
Which was why it was chosen to stalk McQueen’s similarly upgraded, sleek and nimble, manual four-speed 390 Mustang GT.
At the heart of any muscle car is ‘the muscle’, and in the case of the Charger, and in particular, the R/T version, there was a small range of large and pulsating muscular eight-cylinder engines on offer.
Base models came with the more pedestrian two-barrel 230hp 318 cu in small-block donk, while those with a taste for performance could have any big-block variant, beginning with the two-barrel 383 cu in at a modest 290hp, or the 330hp four-barrel version, before you reached the serious end of the options list.
Here could be found the famous 440 cu in Magnum in four-barrel 375hp spec, or presiding over all other powerplants, braver buyers could tick the 425hp, twin four-barrel 426 cu in Hemi, otherwise known as “The Elephant”.
It was so dominant on the streets and racetracks that NASCAR had, in 1965, banned it on the back of a boycott threat
by rival manufacturers.
Nevertheless, Dodge and sister (and now sadly defunct) Mopar brand Plymouth continued to compete successfully in NASCAR through the late ’60s and early ’70s using the almost as powerful 440 wedge-head engine in its Charger race cars.
And the same engine combination, available with either a Torqueflite auto or four-speed manual ’box, was the popular choice for street use.
Plenty of Hemis also found their way into drag racing at the time, and in ultimate supercharged Top Fuel and Funny Car nitromethane burning spec, they produced unheard-of horsepower estimated at the time to be around 2500hp.
Fast-forward to today and the same basic pushrod engine layout is now good for a ground-shaking and mind-numbing 11,000-12,000hp, or 1500hp per cylinder!
In Harry’s case, induction is somewhat milder, though his big-block boasts an extra two venturis, courtesy of the triple two-barrel Holleys as used on the factory’s famous Six-Pack option, with the centre carb feeding the engine and the two outer squirters joining in depending on the mood of the driver.
It wasn’t a factory option at the time, but then again, Harry’s car isn’t exactly all factory. In fact, strictly speaking it’s not even an R/T, but rather started life as a 383 Charger and by the time it had fallen into Harry’s hands it even had a 426 Hemi shoehorned into its engine bay at some point during its life.
But delving deeper into the 58-year-old’s motoring history, it seems engine swaps go with the territory. After completing a mechanic’s apprenticeship, through various circumstances he found himself, at the tender age of 23, with a 1966 model Mercedes 220 SE, which, after his aunty donated the 265 Hemi out of her Chrysler Regal, underwent a driveline swap.
“Once I had the Hemi six, I realised there was a lot of room under the bonnet on the 220, so I rebuilt the 265 up to E49 specs, with a Carter Thermoquad instead of the triple Webers, and swapped it and the gearbox into the Merc,” he explains. “It looked completely stock, but was a very fast car.”
Which began his love affair with things Mopar, although he diverted into classic Ford territory, owning a 1961 Thunderbird for a while before taking the plunge into a 1971 Plum Crazy Purple Plymouth Road Runner, with a matching-numbers drivetrain.
Wisely removing the original 383 for preservation, he now runs a very hot 580hp 383 with Edelbrock aluminium heads and a stroker crank mated to a factory manual four-speed with an overdrive fourth gear.
“The overdrive is pretty rare actually,” he says, “But it’s great because at freeway speeds it’s barely ticking over at just 2500rpm.”
And his work on the Road Runner was rewarded with a Best B Body trophy at the prestigious Chryslers on the Murray annual get-together.
But now his time is mostly taken up with the Charger, which, not surprisingly, soon underwent a heart transplant after he purchased it from a Sydney Dodge enthusiast two years ago.
“It was pretty tired actually, with patchy paint and the triple Holleys needed overhauling, but overall it wasn’t too bad,” says Harry.
“It was pretty solid, so it was a good starting point because although it didn’t leave the factory as an R/T, it had all the R/T running gear in it, including beefed-up suspension and brakes.”
Harry set about tidying up the bodywork and laid on the shimmering J Mid Gold paint, along with the R/T vertical stripes on the rear quarters and across the boot lid.
He also inherited a lot of the original paperwork etc with the car, including the original factory roadside-assist card and original number plates, amongst other records of previous ownership.
Since purchasing it, the Charger has, not surprisingly, undergone a major facelift and makeover, including a thorough driveline checkout and rebuild where necessary, and including rebadging it with the R/T branding.
As it is now, to all intents and purposes, an R/T as far as specifications go, Harry has no problem displaying the rebirthed Charger as such.
“It’s a bit like the guys who do up older Falcons and put GT badging on them, I guess,” he says.
“I always tell people it wasn’t an R/T to begin with, but since it’s been through a lot of changes over the years, I don’t think it really matters.”
While the stock interior needed virtually no work, Harry spent a lot of time refurbishing the instruments and electrics, which also included a total rework of the troublesome flip-up headlights, which tended to be a problem for owners as the cars aged.
Now he’s got it where he wants it, Harry attends the occasional local car show in Melbourne and says he hopes to take it to next year’s Chryslers on the Murray in March.
It may not be as dark and menacing as the villains’ black car in Bullitt, but in the hands of a crazed cab driver from San Francisco, I’m sure it would more than live up to the movie that helped sell so many R/T Chargers back in the day.
THE CHASE FOR SALES
Having once re-enacted the chase scene from Bullitt with Summernats legend and old mate Chic Henry in an ageing Crown Victoria taxi, I can speak with some authority as to the body-slamming impacts of getting airborne on the streets of San Francisco in a large American car.
Noting Chic’s Summernats T-shirt, our crazy-haired female driver also overheard mention of Bullitt as we headed off in search of a restaurant one early summer evening. At the time we couldn’t help noticing a strong odour normally associated with a recently smoked joint inside the cab’s cramped and shabby interior.
“As far as I’m concerned, McQueen was a pussy!” she declared excitedly. “If you want to know what it’s like to drive these streets really fast in a big, old American car, sit down, belt-up and hang on boys!” was the last thing we heard before we had a beginner’s class in what it must be like to experience weightlessness and high G forces in a beaten-up old Ford sedan.
It was definitely a memorable tour of San Francisco that Chic and I used to laugh about before his untimely demise a few years ago.
Without wishing to spoil the movie for those who haven’t seen it, suffice to say the pursuit begins slowly enough, with the baddies tailing McQueen through the city’s downtown, before slowly heating up as McQueen shakes them and then suddenly reappears in their rear-view mirrors. Then it gets heated.
They enter the hillier areas of the city where they start to get big air, shedding hubcaps from tortured wheels and tyres as we get occasional glimpses of the bay, Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Prison.
As a multiple motorcycle enduro champ and accomplished desert bike racer, McQueen no doubt had a bit to do with writing a fallen Triumph 650 rider into the script (McQueen, of course, deftly avoids the fallen rider) as he continues the chase.
The baddies, meanwhile, aim the occasional shot at the Mustang, but ultimately become barbecued meat when they fly off the road into a clump of fuel bowsers.
Ironically, our much-abused cab smelled like its brakes were cooked at the conclusion of our own frantic re-enactment.
Bullitt helped cement the Charger legend for Dodge and sales soared on the back of its supporting role in the movie. The bad guys might have lost the chase, but Mopar won in the end as Dodge showrooms and sales charts became almost as hot as the final fiery scene.