The Black Ghost: Street Racing Legend - 1970 Dodge Challenger 426 Hemi Documentary

It was outperforming all the best, the 396 375 Chevelle, those were nothing to this car, this car was called the

black

ghost

on the west side of Detroit, it would go out and win a lot of races and then it would disappear, it was lunch, this is a car very rare fact. In

1970

alone, it is one of 22 Hemi Challenger rtsc four speeds, but being triple

black

with an alligator green color was the best option you could get, it is the car of all time configured for

racing

. Chrysler was ahead of its time, quality and its drivetrains. That helped me, there is nothing better than that to this day.

My dad has always been a more likeable type of person. He knew he wanted the worst and he ordered it. This car was king on the road in those days, no one really. He knew who the owner was, he just sailed up and down and the guys would come up to you and if you beat the guy first, second, third to the next light, you were the winner, but Godfrey never stops. We talked to so many people he heard about the mystery. car all these wonderful stories that's when I discovered that I need to know what's special about this car my dad received free ratings he was born in 1942 and grew up in nashville, tennessee his family moved to detroit to work in the automotive sector during that time when We met we wanted to have about 12 or 13 little kids together, we would bike to Bell Island and fish, we shared a lot of common interest, I was into model trains, Garfield was into Trains of Tomorrow, the highway, everything we did.

It was running, okay, I had Lionel. had American Flyer, okay that's it, he was always competitive, but it wasn't the situation where guys get competitive and want to fight each other, our competitor was okay, well, I'll catch you next time, I'd say he and I was the closest. as brothers we could be and we were still in high school at that time we lived in an area where there was a lot of drugs, well there was a lot of crime, but none of us did, we were local kids, we didn't get in trouble, but we did in track

racing

and endurance racing.

We had a special place in Detroit where we would race and the police wouldn't bother us, it was just drag racing on Woodward, they would run from light to light and then sometimes they would take it to the back

street

s and that's when they took it very seriously , a full quarter-mile race on our

street

I grew up on in the west end of Detroit, they came to your house and sold out. I was like calling you and everyone falls. on the street me and the neighborhood kids would drive our schwins and we would race there and watch them race at like two in the morning it was a way to free yourself it's a form of entertainment it was a way to see what the car could do Really Garfield He's a good guy in the sense that he wore many hats as a soldier.

You know he was in the 82nd Airborne. I was drafted but I was ready because I did three years of high school. It was a challenge between 1964 and 1966 he served in the dominican republic the government of the united states was stopped with some type of uprising and so on today I ordered 2000 additional men to immediately head to the dominican republic I was all over the dominican republic I mean which was a beautiful island. I just took responsibility as a soldier and just made things work, you know, the best I could. In fact, I was shot many times.

We were attacked by an old plane, old P-38, and my friends. and I had to run through a fence to escape the oxen once they were in a safe area I was supposed to be in a safe area someone threw a hand grenade at us it exploded and I was injured and one of my friends was still injured he has fragmentation in his body from the grenade, that's what he got the purple heart because he was a skydiver by the way, he loved jumping out of planes, in fact it was an addiction, I love my job, he's probably had over 300 jumps he's a one of the few people who can actually do a jump and land on his feet.

I had a good time, they took care of me. It was dedicated to them. I really wanted to stay. I changed my mind and said, "Hey, I've done it." Been home a while, good old Detroit. I'm going to go home and see my family. I learned a lot in the army. It helped me become a young fan. In fact, it even helped me become a better police officer. In the police department he was in traffic control, so his day-to-day job was writing tickets. He wouldn't fine five more, he would fine 20 more. He wasn't like many police officers at that time.

We had the big four and they put you in the car and they wanted to beat you up and all that he was not like that not only was he not an officer in the car but he was on a motorcycle and the children were in love, he was a police officer on a motorcycle coming and he was the kind of person who took an interest in the kids in the neighborhood, raised them well, and, being a police officer, had a lot of respect. My dad is a very good judge. The character he has to be when you stop people, that's what he is. you talk to people he would know you you didn't want enemies on the street he is what I would say the definition of community policing from 37 years as a police officer he just pulled the gun on him once you just have to use it. a lot of discretion about things you have to be fair and you have to be honest and you have to make good judgments that was the good thing about this the new Ford Mustang for the new generation of Americans who want the elegance of a European car until now they have to settle for basic transportation these young people today have their own music their own way of seeing things they also have their own car chevrolet chrysler camaro they wanted to be the number one automobile manufacturer they wanted that pony car to compete with the camaro and the mustang they had the chargers the road runners the gtx those were full bee bodies almost 18 feet long and they had the 69 dart barracudas but it was a little front heavy they didn't really have the They wanted a pony car so that's when they came with the Challenger and the

1970

Cuda.

The new performance champion, the Cuda, the all-new compact sports car, the Dodge Challenger, Chrysler magazine's June 69 cover was a model sitting in the Challenger and that said: "Coming ". the new Dodge Challenger, but they crossed it out because they didn't want you to see it before the actual release date and there were rumors when they were being built in Hamtramck, but they didn't release it until late '69. Take the Challenger, I've seen how young people take the style like that and this one has it for them. They had the best advertising. They were just very creative. What's happening?

Official. Why electric orders let them die at 14 operating speeds in the best vehicles and try to keep the limit, oh I said, this is the new Dodge Challenger, it's not a racer, I have tires there, boy, optional Polyglass GTS tires Razor, put that doohickey on that guy, well that's a new optional slapstick racing twist if you can handle the way people react. Your 1970 Dodge Challenger could be Dodge Material Chrysler for the '70s. They came out with all these crazy colors, crazy plum, mango,

hemi

orange, sublime. They had panther pink for about three months and then one of the executives upstairs found out they were building pink cars. oh no we're not building bean cars at chrysler corporation so they kill the paint it was a big hit the

challenger

in the cuda was the pony car they really needed in the pony car class the mall mustang and the camaro cream, straight race and they were the king, the body was the king Ford still has the same old problem, they keep building turkeys with big displacements and word is out that they sold quite a few

challenger

s, you could go in there and order whatever you wanted, not many guys just marked the pits that Godfrey did, that's a very unique individual and car when he bought it he was 27 years old.

He's that kind of guy that you know I want certain things and I'm going to get what I want. Chrysler, one of the problems with it was They had too many options, but to this day this is what makes them worth more than most other Muscle Cars. 3.5 billion Muscle Car world records. Everything they did was ahead of its time. The Hemi is the only real racing engine in all of Detroit. that you can call your corner dealer relatively easily, you can't just punch up a 429 boss on a Ford order form and expect to get it with that

hemi

that was a big deal to him because it was the best engine you could get.

That was the best of the best during that time, you know, a 425 horsepower engine, like who had very few people, Rio and Mopar, you were kind of unique because they didn't build many of them, that was the only enemy we had . I really knew that in Detroit at that time there was a Henry race, but not on the street, the gold command and lane two moved first. Henry's cars were the ones that beat Thorton and won with a top speed of 128.20. Chrysler came out with the Hemi back in the early 1950s. The combustion chamber is hemispherical in shape.

The result is the engine's ability to inhale the maximum amount of fuel-air mixture and exhale the exhaust gases in the shortest time possible. They always had the hemi engine the 331 the 354 the 392 and they only made it two years, that was the worst of all to this day, all their fun cars with the best fuel and direct, it is the same engine that generates so much power. They are making between 12 and 15,000 horsepower today. The president of GM back in the mid 60's. a limit of 400 cubic inches in his cars, except the corvette, he was old school, we are not going to corrupt the young people, we are not going to put them in vehicles with engines big ones, you know, which really hurt Chrysler if there hadn't been controls, bart. we want the biggest, baddest engine we can build, they already had the hemi design to the extent they had it, but to make a durable one for what they wanted, they really started from scratch, other young engine development guys were racers, racers racing, the ram chargers, started in the late 1950s Strickler has no chance this time against the Detroit engineer Highland Park at his headquarters.

They would do drag races in the back lots. A great group of guys. Tom Hoover Al Nihols, which had carburetion. They were all young boys at heart. His philosophy was that on Sunday Dodge was the best stock car in the national championships and would sell on Monday. They spent over a million dollars developing that engine in the 63 and four, which today would be crazy. The Hemi was only a drag race or Nascar. There was a lot of public. reaction that they were going to release a hemi to the public in '66. hold your hat, a street version of the hottest engine on the stock car circuit, the 426 cubic inch hemi they made it available in any of the bee bodies in '66 and you can get it in a convertible, which is very, very rare, it was an expensive car, it was almost eight hundred dollars more than cost with all the suspension and everything, so you had to have a decent job to afford one, it went up each year the hemi pushed the other. automakers were catching up with wins, that's how far Chrysler was, they had the best drivetrains and they had the lightest cars there were, it was like a coincidence that couldn't be duplicated in any era, anyone who bought a Hemi car knew what it was and they were willing to race on the weekends on Friday and Saturday nights, look we used to go drag racing all the time, he knew about racing like me, when he ordered it it wasn't hard to guess that the 410s were used, the high resistance springs, the stop, everything that was ordered.

With that car, all these big Mopar collectors would kill to be able to go to the dealership and order this car and he had the foresight. I think he's one of the smartest guys to ever order a hemi car. It had to have four speeds because that's who he was, you know he likes the color black, he wants everything to be black. Chrysler didn't actually build many black cars. If you see a real black muscle car, it was ordered triple black. It is a very rare animal player when he originally ordered it. It's supposed to have a black vinyl top with a hood, so I think something happened with the order for it, they screwed it up badly.

He saw that the alligator grain was like he loved it and didn't love it all at the same time. To be honest, I don't like the top, I said, so what? and the cars have everything else, don't worry about the top and sure enough that's what makes the car unique and he likes few luxuries so he wanted the sc options he reviewed for you. I wanted the finer details on the car and that nicer trim package, the seating package is phenomenal, you get all the chrome trim, trim and lower balance under the bumper at the top of the door, belt line , all that and the top tip, you got the little rear window, you know, they hit a fiberglass plug, scored the rear defroster, a white bumblebee stripe, the houndstooth interior, got the shifter, wanted too open the Nascar style gas cap and ordered the very rare gas cap withChristmas Eve in 2015.

I knew I wanted the funeral to be small. I told him there was no way because he touched so many people's lives and we had so many people there just to say thank you. He did this for me. He did that for me. take off his shirt and give it to you that's the kind of person his spirit was that's what I miss the most you know we can do it you know he's my hero to me and the only problem with that think about them Sometimes I miss them, when I met, you used to tell me that you had this car and it was in a garage covered with blankets and other things and there's this car, but then after maybe two or three months passed, we started.

I receive calls. I'm sorry for your dad, but does he still have that car? He knew it was a special car and he kept it all these years, but why did people keep calling about this car? Then I realized it had all these pieces on the back. trunk of the car and they were going to restore the car, that's when I knew I wanted to show this car, I felt like I had to take this to the car show, I mean I have to know, I brought it home and I was on a mission to do it function.

Some people, like my appraisers and stuff, were looking at it and said, "Well, you know, I don't know if this is going to work, you don't have to restore the car and when you do it." You're hearing all this stuff and you're thinking, wow, I eat a lot of money and you know a lot of negativity that couldn't stop was like an addiction, you know we didn't want to get into the engine too much because we were afraid of what would happen, we started spinning. the bolts and they broke on us and then I thought about it and said, well let's keep the car as original as possible for now until we have a chance to talk to some people and see what the best course of action is, do you know what I should do? ?

I thought all these years, you know, someone got it, but I had never seen the car come out until about four years ago and a guy I grew up with in Detroit called me wanting a dual-point hemi distributor for a '70 challenger, I told Mike , what do you need? You need a 0.4 heavy duty. He says I work for this guy and he I have a little hot rod shop in Detroit and they're trying to get this 70 Challenger hemi car up and running. I say in Detroit, he goes, yeah, I said, Is this a triple black rtse Gator Grain 45,000 original miles, four speed, loaded with houndstooth?

He was quiet for a minute, yeah, how do you know? I say: I know the owner. I know the owner. I told him: give him my phone number and call me. It is going well. I am sad to say that he passed away. His son has it. and they wanted to start it, I said please let me see the car before they touch it. This car is very rare and original, so it took them about a week and a half to get used to it, but when Mike told them, he knew the car and he knew his father.

You know, I met the black

ghost

again. Now I know what the smile he had was like. Oh, I said no. He gives me goosebumps. This is it for me. This car is the coolest car I have ever seen. I've been associated with it once and was lucky enough to work on it, so we put new plugs in it, new wires and now it's the moment of truth, will it start? It's been dormant for 37 years, we'll see what happens, probably the first three or four tries didn't want to start, he didn't have anything, this is like, oh, but like my dad always says, never give up, okay, we have to try again this is our 5th time and we finally turned the key and it started fine. and it was like wow, it was kind of a big rush and I was like, yeah, so now we have to keep it running, the next step from there, when we start doing other things like the brakes, which took a couple more months, we had to replace them all. the rubber, I mean, it was just deteriorating, that car was my life for a year, the whole year, when the car was able to leave the garage for the first time under its own power, it was a spectacle, oh yeah, that was the moment .

That was like, Dad, I did it, you know, but we did it, we put it on the road for the first time, I said, Greggy, come on, get in the car, we'll take it for a ride, come hello, it's the 1970s. .

dodge

difficult challenges you just have a good time you spend 30 minutes on the road at 40 kilometers per hour you know, cruising yes, I love the way the car drives you know it's something unique, it's different, I feel connected to it when In fact, I'm driving and shifting gears every time I get in the car and drive it.

I can feel my father's presence and the spirit there. My first big event was at McCakin at the Muscle Car Corvette Nationals in Chicago. He made me feel good. It made me proud, my wife, my daughter, Gregory and I all came out and had a great time. We took this to the autorama and a lot of people came up and said, "That's a car like that and it's that girl, where's Godfrey?" I saw that I'm sorry but he passed away like why and he had to be somewhere I had to call him back he said this guy knows and he got more just to know the story it was just amazing I found out about street racing the people showed up. to me and he says yeah, you know, I've seen that car, I know this car is a

legend

, it's a myth and I'm like yeah, your dad used to race through the alleys of Detroit, that's when we discovered it and started to investigate. ourselves and then he contacted other family members and said what did he do and said no he couldn't, I said who would make up stories like that, that he used to do drag racing, put on boots and go as a police officer .

I started researching the car and started studying the facts. I became a car enthusiast. Every time we take the car out, it's always interesting. All black hemi car with an alligator green top. Many people have not seen a car with that hood. which I want it to be a survivor car like you know, because that's what it is, it's just the original clock, right, it's still unrestored and it still runs great, it's never been touched, it still has the original gaskets on the tailgate. valves, intake motor has never been taken apart, has never been Getting out of the car to see it brought back a lot of happy memories that I didn't even think about once, yeah man, like I said, that was 50 years ago, I mean, ya you know, a long time ago, man waiting, hey, with coffee and his son, it's also very touching for me because I've seen it since the first day, it's a good feeling, there was an army man in the car and my dad basically had that because of the army, so my son saw that and said: hey, you know? that's gq so he comes back to the house and finds two little army men and then he says you know what belongs in the car and then he puts them in the car and then my son says that's gq, you dad and I carry on his father's legacy and he could have sold it too.

My plans are to keep the car, so move on to a third generation. Is incredible. I like to walk in it. How does this guy make you feel me again? You know that's what it's about. car they cling to I think my dad would be proud I think he would be smiling almost cheek to cheek