Junkyards can be depressing if you love classic cars. Some of them don't deserve to spend their retirement years rotting away. However, exploring scrapyards can be fun, too, because it often leads to finding rare gems or unusual project cars.
You can find all sorts of cool vehicles in junkyards. Sometimes, it's muscle cars with rare options, but you can also stumble across vintage dragsters and gassers. The 1970 Dodge Super Bee you see here is neither super rare nor a dragster, but it has an unusual feature: its front clip was radically modified to tilt forward.
It's the kind of conversion you'd see on a race car, but this Super Bee appears to be as stock as they get. It still rides on its production wheels and has a vinyl top, and there's no sign of safety-spec upgrades inside the cabin. It's a rather peculiar modification to have on a muscle car, but I guess one previous owner simply wanted better access under the hood.
Weird mods aside, this Mopar has seen better days. Saved from a junkyard a few years ago, the Super Bee has been sitting for a very long time. Judging by the amount of rust on the lower body panels and the roof's condition, it spent at least a couple of decades outside. The engine is also missing, as does the front grille and bumper. But there's some good news to share, too.
According to our host, this Super Bee is a factory Six-Pack model. This means it left the assembly line with a six-barrel 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) RB big-block engine. Rated at 390 horsepower, it was Chrysler's second-most potent mill at the time, slotted only below the 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) HEMI. It's also a relatively rare version of the Super Bee.
Dodge produced and sold 15,506 examples in 1970, but only 1,268 vehicles were ordered with the V-code 440 "Six-Pack." That's just over 8% of production. Sure, it's nowhere near as scarce as the HEMI, but it's a killer drivetrain setup you won't see very often nowadays.
The other good news is that the Super Bee will soon get a second chance at life. The owner of this field also has a restoration shop, and many of the cars you'll see in the video below are scheduled to get a refresh sooner or later. There's no info on whether he wants to keep the forward-titting front clip, but it makes no difference to me. It's another 1970 Super Bee saved, and that's all that matters.
Documented by YouTube's "Auto Archaeology," this field is packed with all sorts of cool muscle cars from the golden era. As we've seen in a previous post, it's also home to Challengers and Chargers of the R/T variety, a 1969 Sper Bee A12, and a pack of Plymouth Road Runners. The latter also includes a rare "Six-Pack" model, a convertible, and an example finished in Moulin Rouge.
The new video also shows a pair of first-year Dodge Charger R/Ts, as well as a 1970 version equipped with a luggage rack. This one left the factory in Sublime, and I bet it will look awesome following a restoration. It pops up at the 2:40-minute mark, right after the Super Bee with the tilting front end. Hit the play button below to check them out.
Ask Ciprian about cars and he'll reveal an obsession with classics and an annoyance with modern design cues. Read his articles and you'll understand why his ideal SUV is the 1969 Chevrolet K5 Blazer. Full profile
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