Here at the Daily Turismo, we take pride in being frugal. Why waste your money on an old Porsche when you can have just as much fun in a Renault Fuego...but sometimes a car shows up with a hefty price tag, but still tugs at one's heartstrings. Like this 1970 Dodge Challenger with Viper V10 power found here on eBay
currently bidding for $39,100 reserve-not-met with 4 days to go, located in Rio Linda, CA.
Even a blind man would be a fool to not love the original (1969-1974) Dodge Challenger. It was Chrysler's approach to the pony car and slightly larger than it's E-body sibling, the Plymouth Barracuda. This Challenger has a 2004 Viper 505 cubic inch V10 engine rated at 550 horsepower mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox. Not sure if I buy that the car "drives and handles like a new viper, but better" ...but...I still want it.
What do you think? Is this crazy money? Or is $50k an acceptable amount of money to spend on your mid-life crisis car? Comments below.
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ReplyDeleteThere were three generations of Barracuda - the '64-66 which wasn't much more than a fastback Valiant, the beautiful, delicate '67-69, and the '70-74 which was essentially a somewhat chubbed-up rendition of the '69 Camaro. The Challenger was a me-too badge-engineered version of the last Barracuda.
ReplyDeleteConceptually this is all well and good, the problem being that it'd be an even nicer car with a late-model SRT Hemi V8, it wouldn't have required all the surgery,not sure what I think of the chassis setup and that huge tire stagger makes me think someone was thinking mostly about straight-line, and those Foose wheels are awful.
Restomods are the new "Thing" and this badass keeps it all in the family: a true beast of an engine from the Dodge family. I'm willing to bet that if the market isn't up for something like this now, it will be soon.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of question is income based of course but for my dollars you can get an awful lot of car for under 20k. The exceptions where it would be worth it to go beyond that level would have to really be from the heart, not because of some list of specs or some social status BS. Form, function, mechanical purity a package experience with the right things wrong. Ideally that should be every car you get.
ReplyDeleteI want every drive to be a conscious experience of the vehicle like the first time I drove it. I think you can achieve that with a sub 10k car (the right ones obviously) so I have a hard time believing that 50k gets that much more of an experience. Yeah, sure it gets you faster etc etc but id rather have a wide variety of unique experiences.
For 40k you could get an urQuattro, some kind of interesting muscle car, an M3 and some kind of dd. Or you can have one car that does one thing. Thats my take on the situation anyway, I don't think I could write that check.
100% agree.
DeleteGet the REAL DEAL for the same price.
ReplyDeleteThe world according to Rene...
ReplyDeleteWhy waste your money on an air cooled, 200 some horsepower, 911 Porsche that wants to kill you with "lift throttle oversteer" when you can get killed for the same price in THIS !
It's a conceptually sound car for the rrestomod scene (hate the wbeels/steering wheel/ interior bits) but as investmants go its a dice roll. Every car scene that has its day in the sun eventually gets the backlash that comes when it all gets out of hand. Who knows what the future hold? Original cars tend to hold their value like art. Customs and hot rods work more like fashion.
ReplyDeleteAs a mid life crisis car its pretty much perfect and at least it's not another corvette. Buy it, swap those wheels, lay some 11s
Mrkwong:
ReplyDeleteWhy is your first comment ALWAYS deleted?
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DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteTried it. No clues.
DeleteNot always. But this board has no editing facilities, and sometimes I like to go back and fix typos, so the only solution is to delete and repost.
DeleteEither a tremendous waste of money or a testament to the mix and match mentality of folks with waaaay too much money to spend.
ReplyDelete