After reading through the AAR/TA thread on here I can't help but to think of an interesting car I seen this past summer at the CNY Mopar Madness - June 2016.

It was interesting for quite a few reasons and I will try and cover them here with some pics. I'd be curious to hear what other people know about the same car. Anyway I thought is was cool and it would be a pretty interesting topic for a Saturday afternoon in January.

Here's the story:

The couple sitting under the tent bought this one new in 1971. It is a 1971 Challenger R/T. Ordered with the 426 Hemi a 4-speed and a 3:54 Dana. The story on how he came to own the car was pretty cool. He said he was a 100% Ford guy and had just ordered a 1971 Boss 351 Mustang, went to work on the midnight shift and when he got home he got a call from the local Dodge dealer. He had heard he had ordered a new Mustang and wanted him to come down to the dealership to check out the Challenger. He told him that there was no chance he was buying a Dodge but decided to drop by for some fun, As they sat down at the desk and went through the Challenger and the options they ended up building Hemi Challenger that was equipped with close to the same options that he had ordered with his Mustang, that is why you see the spoiler package. The first shocker came when they tallied up the price...the Challenger and the Mustang came within $22 of each other! Pretty much a no brainer at the point but Bill (the Challenger owner) thought to himself not soo fast...no why these guys are going to be able to match what the Ford dealer is giving me for my trade.a 1967 Ford Fairlane GT 390 4-Speed. What about my trade Bill said....will how much was Ford offering?...I am not telling you that Bill said chuckling. Anyway the Dodge boys go out and check out the trade in....come back in and say its worth $1500....Bill puts his head down....well what was Ford offering? $1100 says Bill....the Dodge sticks out his hand and says I guess we have a deal....and that's how a Ford guy comes to own one of fifty eight or so 1971 Hemi Challenger R/T's.

First weird thing about this car is when you look at the front of the car it has both Challenger and Cuda front spoilers...both Plymouth and Dodge J78 Front Spoilers were shipped in the trunk for dealer install with this particular car. History is that the original dealership installed both sets....."

The next thing I asked was about the paint: So I asked Bill how he ended up ordering a FC7 Plum Crazy car....Bill said he had wanted a blue one but the dealer had told him he had just sold a GB5 Challenger with a white R/T stripe and he didn't think it was a good idea to two of them running around there small town. I asked him how long the original paint lasted....Bill said the original paint started coming off in giant chunks as soon as he had brought it out of winter storage in the spring of 1972....because it was a Hemi car...Dodge didn't warranty the paint so it got its first repaint before it was even a year old.

I thought this was a bit weird myself as I thought Hemi cars came with a 12 month/12k mile warranty. He wouldn't have been over for time. I guess he could have been over the mileage but it didn't seem like it would from the way he told the story. I wonder if back in the day if that was a common occurence with the too bad soo sad warranty denial.

As you can see it has a very late scheduled build date of June 16th 1971...one of the last Hemi cars made...what made this more interesting is that Bill said he didn't actually take delivery of the car until September 11th or 14th (I can't remember which day he said now). Looking back now it would have been nice to have taken a pic of the door sticker as well but I didn't. He was pretty adament about the daye he got the car. He was getting pissed that the car was taking so long. His wife was sitting in the chair beside him nodding her head the whole time.

So where does this car fall in line in regards to the last Hemi built. Can anyone share the discussion that is going on about this? I seemed to have missed it.

Dave