70 Challenger from 80's street machines national

Here's a picture my friend found he took from the early 80's street machine nationals in Springfield Il. It looks like a 70 Challenger it has an RT hood but the hood has 340 TA six pack painted on it. I see it also has the carpet on the dash. Hard to say what this car started life as and shows what was happening to these cars back then.

I don't care for it now or then and the only way I would have stopped to look at it was if there were cute girls or free beer with it. Lol

Looks like a ton of labor in that paint

Cool car.... great for the time period. What always got me in the 80s was the huge number of street rods sporting the mighty 426 Hemi. At the mixed shows there were more 426 hemi powered street rods then cars.

Here's another 1 with a late cuda in the background. Anything you could think of was going on. There were no guardrails on customizing.

And alot of drug use. Lol

lacquer fumes and bondo dust, plus excess alcohol used for cleanup, causes strange things to be thought of in one's brain.

Who cares about that ugly thing with the wing parked in the corner, kids like the cool cars.

Car Craft Street Machine Nationals in 1981 Sacramento Cal. I'd love to find it

That Challenger kind of reminds me of Unlawfl's car

I took this photo at Car Craft Indy circa 1980
The Fairgrounds was a dust bowl

1985 Car Craft S.M.N.

1987

The Challenger in the OP pic belonged to Mike Phelan back then.
Like it or not it was obviously it was a custom car.
What drove the purists crazy was that it was a factory V-Code 6 pack car with a 6/71 blown 340 in it.
In the early 90's it had a wiring fire in the dash which ended it's life as a custom car.

All the purist whiners should be happy now as it was restored to stock appearing.
Last I knew the car went to California bout 4 years ago.

Some pics from a 1985 Custom Auto Show.

Edit:
The added pic is what the Challenger looks like now.

1978 SMN in Indy. Political comment on Mr Carter and the even/odd gas rationing.

I love the old 70's and 80's custom paint jobs. Panel painting, lace, pinstripes, fades, scallops, spider webbing, gold and silver leaf, etc. It's a shame so many have been restored back to original.

I agree, the now vintage custom paint jobs were sooo cool back then.
People personalized their cars (even musclecars) back then.

Now everyone thinks that they can only be EXACTLY how it came off the assembly line down to the boring hub cabs.
That fact is really kinda sad.

I have tons of pics from the Indy, DuQuoin, and Springfield Nats. I lived in Lafayette, Indiana at the time so I was able to go to all of them. Wild time for sure...

I like some of those older paint jobs. Not really into the body mods though.

Ran across this on Youtube a few weeks ago.

https://youtu.be/w0WrfjuK6QM

Nice vid, that first one (GTX) wow.... maybe after Elton Johns bathroom? Still cool though.

My buddy Rudy Munis, sold his AAR to the Brothers collection, yes it was that nice! He has a clone of the Phantasm Cuda too...

THis is a photo of a page of pictures in an album of mine from the SMN in Indy. I went 78, 79 & 80.

A few from the mid 70s. Top is a factory FC7 440 Six Pack R/T. Bottom is a 440 4 speed. Converted to a Hemi 4 speed.

This was the era when from the pages of Hot Rod you could buy Formula 1 Superstock N50x15 white letter tires for like $60 each!!!!!!!

I'm guessing it must have just been a 340 six pack in this picture since the hood isn't cut and before he added the blower. The amount of blown cars were insane and caused a lot of guys to upgrade. Heck I was running a 13.1 590 cammed .030 over aluminum rod 440 and I wasn't even close to the fastest cars. I remember Monty thought his car was fast when he came and was shocked how bad he was getting beat. That was the end of that car and the start to his GTX. There was a monster hemi out of Detroit in an old sedan that was insane. The first year the cops didn't have a clue and every street and parking lots were a drag strip. Crowds in the street were stopping cars and pouring bleach in the streets as well as some that had their garden hose out wetting the street. By the third year they had enough and had police everywhere and fire trucks spaying down the crowds. What a great experience.

Funny he and I both had FC 7 V code ebodys.

And you took home $90 a week.

Monte RIP quote. 1982 street machine. Car had been in the 9's by then. Did well until I came up against a 64 Max wedge Plymouth out of Detroit ...he smoked my ass and I was pretty fast. He was damn fast.

Rat Patrol !

More Indy SMN Again, these are pictures of a photo album put together by an 18 year-old me

More from the album

Aaahhh .. the Street Machine Nats …. Bad memories of Indy .. my friend having to spend the weekend in jail after getting bit by a police dog for doing nothing wrong … not being able to see him in jail … having to miss work Monday for my friends court date … hoping we could scrape together enough money to pay his fine without having to call his parents … fun times !

It was crazy, with riot cops (see picture above) and police dogs and wow - this was the first thing I went to after graduating High School and I was one wide - eyed kid!

Thank you for sharing this! This was my first attempt at an Old Skool Paint display but it will not be my last!! This was so much fun to put together. Some of the cars were still wearing their paint from the '70s, some were a refresh of a prior custom paint job and some were totally fresh, but they all had the perfect look. I think this display got more attention and media coverage than any other display I've ever done.

Get ready for Old Skool Paint 2.0

Ed

Agreed. I love the custom paint jobs, but prefer more stock body styles.

I like all that stuff too - back when they were just cars to have fun with and not rolling investment portfolios. I like original cars too, but it was always neat to see how creative some people could be with their cars.

I like the wild paint AND the body mods.

Our cars are cool and Chrysler did a great job on style but I am so tired of the same cars in the same colors with the same style.

Give me something to catch my eye not the same stuff I have seen for 40+ years.

I have grown to like the pink on pink cuda's and the light green stripes on dark green challengers. The things nobody ordered because they were not the normal color combo.

This link has a lot of the odd colors I have grown to like.


https://board.moparts.org/ubbthread...odge-challenger-body-color-question.html

Plus I bought this 14,000 mile 4 speed V code for $800 in 1974. Lol

I attended the Street Machine Nationals at Indy in 78, 79 & 81. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of my cars while there. I really wish I could find someone who might have pics of my cars, particularly the car I took in 78. It was the first Mopar I ever owned which was a red 70 Charger R/T. I did take pictures of the car while there but they were on my girlfriend's camera. We broke up shortly after the Nats and before the film was developed. Needless to say, she never gave me the film or the pictures. Also, Hot Rod magazine rounded up all of the Charger owner's and their cars for a photo shoot they were doing to include in an article on Chargers they were supposed to publish but they never published the article so I didn't get to see those pics either.

I did the Street Machine Nationals in Indy, two of them. The 1ist one was pretty cool, the 2nd was enough to make me not want to go back, ever. I took a 70 Road Runner to both, nothing special by the standards that was there.

My wife and I had our 2 YO daughter with us. We had a hotel on the west side of Indy, but somehow got into the mess on the east side. The people had the street blocked off, and had a pretty narrow pathway through the mass of humanity. The guy that was in front of me did a big burnout, people 30' in front of him (while he was doing the burn out) crowded into the only open pathway to get pictures of his efforts. He got a bit out of shape, and people were scrambling to get out of his way. To this day I have no idea how no one got hurt, but as soon as he passed, the narrow path was reorganized, a couple guys were holding onto the door handles of my car, and people were dumping bleach under my tires. The guy holding the drivers door handle told me I could go when ever I wanted, he and his buddy would hold my door handles so the smoke could really start to roll. About the same time the pathway in front of me was filled with people, I couldn't even see more the 30', nor could I see if anything was on the other side of them. I choose not to do anything stupid, I told the guy to get his hands off my car, and idled through the booing crowd.

When we finally got back to our hotel and got out daughter to sleep, and finally got to sleep ourselves, we got woke up around 2 am to sirens, flashing lights, lots of crowd noise, and Police on bullhorns yelling for the crowds to disperse. The police were just outside of our room window, and we were on the 2nd floor! I looked through the curtain and saw 3 policemen in full riot gear with a Police dog standing in front of our window looking into the parking lot. My car was down there someplace, but at that point, I wasn't concerned about the well being of my treasured car. ! When we got up the next morning, we left Indy.
Being on the grounds was fun, after that, nothing was fun at all.

I think this was 1980
Def Indy

I think this was 1980
Def Indy

1980 Car Craft Nats
Indy
Note the 2 carbs thru the hood

Sounds about right poorboy, we were just standing around the hotel parking lot watching the cars when the cops came with the riot gear and dogs we ran for the hotel but the entrances were locked , some guy opened a door and we ran in as my friend was half way thru the door a dog bit him on the leg, he didn't do anything or say anything, when we got to our room his leg was bleeding so we went to the front desk to call for medical assistance , after a long wait the police showed up , we thought they were taking him to the hospital , we were told we couldn't go with him , what we didn't know was that he was arrested , when we tried to get information we couldn't , we even drove to the jail he was in and couldn't see him, eventually he was released on Monday ( we were supposed to be home by then ) for his court appearance , he was found guilty for doing nothing wrong and was fined luckily we managed to get enough money together for his fine .. barely! he was scared to death and crying he wasn't even 20 years old then. talk about a conspiracy ! if that would have happened today I am sure a law suit would be filed against the police. I heard another guy telling a story : a rep for a performance part manufacturer was driving back to his hotel and was torn from his truck and arrested and thrown on a bus and the officer driving the bus said " if it was up to me I would take you all out to a field and shoot you " true story ! Wow !! I went back to Indy in 2005 with my wife for a Mopar race at the famed drag strip and managed to come home unscathed but I cringed just entering the Indy city limits !

You know, a couple things strike me about the pictures of the SMN: The crowd was much, much younger than what you see today at a car event unless attending a sport compact -type event. And the cars...they are typically 10-15 years old. That's like a 2008-2013 model today. But when those cars from the 2000's show up at an event today, the gray hairs can be heard to complain that they didn't come to see cars that "belong on a used car lot". Much has changed, and not so sure that it's for the better.
I still go to show. cruise and race events and I generally have a good time, but man, it used to be so much more fun.
That's me standing through the sunroof of my new 024.

I feel the same way. Lots of great memories.

Back in 2007, I bought a 74 Cuda from Ken Mosier (R.I.P.) that had been a custom show car back in the late 70's - early 80's. It had Street Machine Nationals stickers on the windows, so it had been to several of those shows. Black with a pearl white stripe, black top and interior. Ken told me it had belonged to a perv dude who went to prison for being Chester the Molester. It was a local car to Indy, so it was probably at those shows. I sold it a few years ago because I knew I wasn't gonna get to it for a long time, and word on the street is it got the Pro Touring treatment.