December 2022 Featured Car

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

This Challenger is a sinister Hemi-powered 1970 Challenger R/T SE known as the Black Ghost. No one knew when the Black Ghost might appear, but they certainly knew where. Woodward Avenue and the more secluded back streets of Detroit were the best places to street race. The Black Ghost had a mysterious penchant for materializing, winning, and then vanishing.

For style, the car was equipped with a “bumble bee” white stripe on the tail, hood pins, houndstooth interior, and the real conversation piece—the Gator Grain black vinyl top. The car is one of just 23 Hemi four-speed R/T SE Challengers sold in the model’s debut year, and it is possibly the only car ever built with these performance and trim options

Chrysler developed the Hemi engine in the early 1960s, making it available only in race cars.

By 1966, however, you could order one in a production model, and by 1970, the top-of-the-line Hemi was a 426-cubic-inch V-8 that produced a reported 425 horsepower (likely closer to 470 hp).

The Ghost showed up on Woodward in the spring of 1970, blew the doors off every competitor, and then drove off into the darkness before anyone could answer the question, “Who was that?” Weeks would pass, and the menacing Challenger would reemerge from the shadows, dominate, and disappear once again. Its legend grew. And then it vanished for good.

Godfrey Qualls was the one racing the Challenger, and he was a Detroit police officer. Qualls’ new triple-black Challenger was delivered in the spring of 1970 and, as Curtis Neal says, “when May and June came, that car was a terror on the street.”

Qualls not only ordered his dream car with the R/T and Special Edition (SE) packages and the monstrous 426—a 23 percent upcharge of $778.75 ($5522 today)—but he made sure to include the Super Track Pak with four-speed manual transmission and floor-mounted Hurst pistol grip, which sent power to a Sure-Grip Dana 60 with 4.10 gears.