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

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I loved this. You can tell that his childhood friend was so happy to see the car again. And this guy sounded like he lived the best life. So glad it was able to be passed on to his son.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 157 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/lazarus870 πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

Thank you for sharing our documentary! This one has been a long one in the making and we're so happy to see it getting the response it has over the past few days. The Qualls family and everyone in the documentary were fantastic to work with during production. They really are passionate about the car and sharing GQ's story!

In regards to the Black Ghost itself, the car just oozes cool! When you see the car in person, you can't help but think "This is a badass car!". But the story behind it is what truly makes it special.

For those of you curious, Greg does plan on passing the car down to his son and keeping it with the family. There's no plan to sell it anytime soon and the car couldn't be with better people!

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 83 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/HistoricVehicle πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

Was just watching this.

This is the kind of car that I wish I could afford. Low slung, angry looking, bigass motor and 4.10 gears, a manual transmission. I don't care about fast. How it feels is what counts.

This is the kinda car where you smile every time you put your foot to the floor because you're turning gasoline into noise and fun and maybe a little bit of horsepower in there too.

If only it wasn't 500k+ (and I had room and need for a car instead of my trucks).

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 137 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/LordofSpheres πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

β€œHow does this car make you feel when you look at it?”

β€œLike GQ”

Damn.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 15 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/its_bme πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

This is the best car story I’ve ever heard.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 13 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/dcal1981 πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

Well, shit. I didn't expect to be crying watching this.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 14 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/NothinsOriginal πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

I'm not a Mopar person but that car is seriously cool. That sort of story is something you'll never get to experience today. Everyone (in the auto enthusiast world at least) knows what each manufacturer is offering, everyone knows what each car is capable out of the showroom and what can be done with it with simple mods. Not only that but no one really had modified street cars capable of running an 8s 1/4 mile back in the day. I could go out buy a Hellcat, and some dude down the block with an LS Swap Turbo Foxbody could crush me.

The only legendary street racing car I know of is the beater bomb Foxbody which is exactly what I described, a turbo LS Foxbody. It's put together extremely well it hooks very well. He takes down almost everything within its category.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 8 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/Slimy_Shart_Socket πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

Watched this yesterdayβ€”it was fantastic. Definitely one you watch all the way through.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 5 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/jpw33831 πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies

Fantastic! Loved every second of this.

πŸ‘οΈŽ︎ 7 πŸ‘€οΈŽ︎ u/Doubleday888 πŸ“…οΈŽ︎ Dec 19 2020 πŸ—«︎ replies
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[Music] it was beating everything best chevelle's 396 375 those were nothing for this car this car was called the black ghost on the west side of detroit he would come out win a lot of races and then disappear it was the luncheon this is a very rare car made in 1970 only it's one of 22 four-speed hemi challenger rtscs but to be triple black with a gator green the best options you could get it's the all-time cars set up for racing chrysler was ahead of their time the quality and their drive trains like that helped me you just can't beat it to this day my dad's always been a type of person that he likes the best he knew he wanted the baddest and he ordered it this car was the king on the street in those days nobody really knew who owned it he would just cruise up and down and guys would pull 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 that heard about the mystery car all these wonderful stories that's when i figured out i need to know what's special about this car my dad got free qualls was born in 1942 and he was raised in nashville tennessee their family moved up to detroit for the automotive jobs during that time we met we wanted about 12 or 13 young kids together we would ride our bikes over to bell island and fish we shared a lot of the common interest i was in the model trains garfield was in tomorrow trains freeway everything we did was racing okay i had lionel he had american flyer okay it's just everything it was always competitive but it wasn't the situation where guys get competitive want to fight with one another our competitor was okay well i'll get you the next time i would say he and i was as close as brothers could get and we were still in high school at this 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 that we were local kids didn't get into trouble but we got into racing over track racing and drag racing we had a special spot in detroit where we would race and the police didn't bother us it was just drag races on woodward they would run light to light and then sometimes they would take it to the back streets and that's when they took it real serious a full quarter mile race our street that i grew up on on the far west side of detroit they come by your house and do a burnout i was like calling you out and they all go down the street me and the kids in the neighborhood we'd drive our schwins and run down there and watch them drag race like two in the morning it was a way of releasing is a way of entertainment it was a way to see what the car could really do garfield is a good guy in that he wore a lot of hats well 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 rotc it was a challenge between 1964 and 1966 he served in the dominican republic the u.s government went down into curb with some kind of uprising and so forth earlier today i ordered 2 000 extra men to proceed immediately to the dominican republic i was all over dominic republic i mean it was a beautiful island i just took on the responsibility as a soldier and i just made things work out you know as best as i could i was shot at many times as a matter of fact uh we were attacked by an old airplane old p-38 and uh my buddies and i had to run through a fence to get out the way from bullocks one time they were at a safe zone it was supposed to be in safe zone someone threw a hand grenade at us it exploded and i was wounded and so was one of my buddies he still has fragmentation in his body from the grenade that's what he got the purple heart for he was a paratrooper by the way he loved jumping out of planes as a matter of fact it was an addiction i love my job he's probably had over 300 jumps he's one of the very few people that can actually do a jump and do a standing landing i had a good time they took care of me i was dedicated to them i really wanted to stay in i changed my mind and said hey i haven't been home in a while good old detroit i'm gonna go home and see my family i learned a lot in the military it helped me become a fan rounded young man as a matter of fact it even helped me become a better police officer in the police department he was in traffic enforcement so his day-to-day was writing tickets he wouldn't write tickets for five over he'd write tickets for 20 over he wasn't like a lot of cops at that time we had the big four and they would pull you in the car and want to beat you up and all that he wasn't like that not only that he wasn't an officer in the car he rode the motorcycle and kids were infatuated he was a motorcycle cop coming around and he was the kind of guy that took interest in the kids in the neighborhood raising them right and being a policeman he got a lot of respect my dad's a very good judge character he has to be when you pull people over it's the way you talk to people he would get to know you you didn't want enemies in the street he's what i would say the definition of community policing out of the 37 years as being a police officer he only drew his weapon once you just have to use 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 part about it the new ford mustang for the new breed of americans who want the elegance of a european touring car until now have to settle for basic transportation these young people nowadays they've got their own music their own way of looking at things they've got their own car too camaro by chevrolet chrysler wanted to be the number one automaker 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 almost 18 foot long bee bodies and they had the 69 dart barracudas but it was a little heavy in the front end they didn't really have the pony car they wanted so that's when they came in with the challenger and the cuda from 1970. the new performance champ cuda the all-new sports compact the dodge challenger the june 69 chrysler magazine cover was a model sitting on the challenger and that says coming the new dodge challenger but they had it blacked out because they didn't want you to see it before the actual release date and there was rumors when they were being built in hamtramck but they didn't release it until late of 69. take the challenger i've seen how the young people take the style like this and this one has it for them they had the best advertising they were just very creative what's wrong officer why electricity orders let them die at 14 operating rates in top vehicles and try to stay the limit oh i said this is the new dodge challenger rt it's not a racer i got tires there boy optional polyglass gts razor tires put that doohickey in that boy well that's a new optional slapstick racing shift if you can handle the way people react to your 1970 dodge challenger you could be dodge material chrysler for the 70 they came out with all these crazy colors plum crazy go 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 are not building bean cars at chrysler corporation so they kill the paint it was a great success the challenger in the cuda was the pony car that they really needed in the pony car class the mall mustang and cream camaro straight race and they were the king the body was the king ford still has their same old problem they keep building turkeys with big displacements and the word is around they sold quite a few challengers you could go in there and order whatever you wanted not too many guys just checked off the boxes godfrey did that is one very unique individual and car when he bought the car he was 27. he's just that type of person where you know i want these certain things and i'm going to get what i want chrysler one of their problems was they had too many options but to this day this is what makes them worth more than most of the other muscle cars 3.5 billion world record muscle car everything they did was just ahead of their time the hemi is the only real racing engine in all of detroit that you can dial up from your corner dealer with relative ease you can't just tick off a boss 429 on a ford order form and expect to get it having that hemi that was a big thing to him because that was the top engine you could have that was the best of the best during that time you know 425 horsepower engine like who had that very few people rio and the mopar you were kind of unique because they didn't build a whole lot of them that was the only enemy that we really knew of in detroit at that time there was race henry's but not on the street the golden commando and lane two moved first henry cars were the ones to beat thornton wins with a top end speed of 128.20 chrysler came out with the hemi back in the early 50s the combustion chamber is hemispherical in shape the result is the ability of the engine to inhale the maximum amount of fuel and air mixture and exhale the exhaust gases in the shortest possible time they always had the hemi motor the 331 the 354 the 392 and they only made two years that was the baddest of them all to this day all your top fuel funny cars and direct it's the same motor that makes this much power they're making 12 to 15 000 horsepower today gm's president back in the mid 60s put a 400 cubic inch limit on their cars except for the corvette he was old school we're not going to corrupt youth we're not going to put them in vehicles with big motors you know which really hurt them chrysler had there was no holds bart we want the biggest baddest motor we can build they had the hemi design already as far as they had but to make one durable for what they wanted they really started from scratch other young engine development guys were racers drag racers the ram chargers they started in the late 50s strickler doesn't have a chance this time against the engineer from detroit highland park in their headquarters they would drag race on the back lots a great group of guys tom hoover al nichols who was had a carburation they were all young guys at heart their philosophy was when on sunday dodge is the top stock car at the nationals sell on monday they spent over a million dollars developing that motor in 63 and four which today would be crazy money the hemi was race only drag or nascar there was so much 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 are very very rare they were an expensive car it was like almost eight hundred dollars over cost with all the suspension and everything so you had to have a decent job to afford one it escalated every year the hemi pushed the other automakers to catch up with wins that's how far chrysler was ahead they had the best drive trains and they had the lightest cars there was like a match you could not duplicate in any era anybody bought a hemi car knew what it was and they were out to race on the weekends friday and saturday night see we used to go to drag racing all the time he knew about racing like i did so when he ordered it it was no guessing the 410 were ran the heavy duty springs the bump stop all that was ordered with that car all these big mopar collectors they would kill to be able to go the dealer and order this car and he had the foresight i think he's one of the smartest guys to ever order a hemi car he had to have a four-speed because that's the way he was you know he likes the color black he wants that all black chrysler didn't actually build very many black cars if you see a real black muscle car it was ordered triple black is very rare animal player when he ordered it originally he's supposed to have a black vinyl top with a shaker hood so i think something happened with his order they screwed up royally on it he saw the gator grain was like he loved it and he didn't love it all at the same time he didn't like the top to be honest i said uh so what and the cars got everything else don't worry about the top and sure enough that's what makes the car unique and he likes little luxury so he wanted the sc options that he checked you wanted the finer details on the car and that nicer trim package the seat package is phenomenal you got all the chrome moldings the trim and the lower balance below the bumper on top of the door the belt line all that stuff and the overhead council you got the small back window you know they hit a fiberglass plug he checked off rear defogger white bumblebee stripe the houndstooth interior he got the her shifter he wanted to pop up nascar style gas cap too and he ordered the very rare locking gas cap wow even that right side mirror you know that's a rare option yeah because they only come with the one left side and he wanted the hood pins he didn't want the hood to fly up at a over 100 mile an hour and am fm because we had one good radio station in detroit wavx 99 fm real rock radio constantly wabx and they played a whole side of albums so he wanted am fm for that [Music] i would have loved to have been there with that salesman and he's just checking this this i want this i want this the night he got it he said hey kurt come on over here i got something to show he didn't tell me he got the car and i was really surprised you know it was on a cold night but i said hey let's wait the weather's gonna warm up we'll see what the big boy can do it came to life when may and june come that car was a terror on the street that car made a name for herself [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] we knew we had a dominant car this car had power chrysler rated at 425 horsepower actual dyno power on this car was 470 horsepower it would appear on woodward he'd make some passes and then you wouldn't see the car again for a month or two they called it the black coast that just traveled all around everybody knew the car existed but nobody hardly saw it they heard oh yeah i got beat by that black heavy challenger our neighbor they bought a 427 corvette aluminum head motor and then they stepped it in this random camaro strictly to be the fastest king on woodward and look for the baddest hemi car that they heard of which was the black ghost [Music] on the summertime we would race cars that was it yeah he knew how to drive it that's for sure gq the street racer i don't know much about that um my dad kind of didn't tell me about that part but from what i know you go to the street called stucker stucco is a street in detroit the police didn't bother you because it was an industrial area there were no houses no cross street and we had a full quarter mile and stopping area we had it all marked off we had a flag man and everything we raced together with that car i'm on the passenger seat he's driving he wanted to show that he was the baddest cat around okay and i was his sidekick we had a gentleman from west bloomfield that had a vet was terrorizing everybody i said gospel we cannot play around with this guy this guy's got as much power as you do and he's lighter i said the thing that you got over him is the 410 ring a 410 axle digs out faster than a 323 because you get more engine turns you get them off the line it's a done deal and that's when we put the slicks on because i used to race too i said we're gonna put the slicks on this car so we won't be spinning and he spinning when the flagman dropped their hand was gone we were gone i said gosh we shift this car when i hollered and i was telling him shift man shift ship this car we won it the guy with the corvette and actually wanted to come back and they raced another time boom he pulled out the hole again beat him again we hollered and screamed yes yes yes we were just excited jubilation is flowing out of us you know what i mean two little boys from each side of detroit beat the rich guy so it was a good feeling i mean we were hollering and screaming and everybody was happy for us that car it was like a second home to me requires discipline you got to work on that car that becomes your main interest that keeps you out of trouble it also makes your mind sharp because you got to think about what you're doing well if i do this will it make it faster or will it slower so it's a thinking man's game too and that's the thing i liked about godfrey he would think about things and we'd talk about it i don't think that caravan lost the street race i think he liked the thrill you know you could imagine a man jumping out of airplanes and getting a rush and now he buys this hemi challenger and then he's having another rush so he's simulating basically you know what he was doing in the military he always had a wild side to him you know you do things as a young man i'm pretty sure it wasn't legal at all i'm pretty sure it's very illegal as a kid my first memory was when i was sitting in the kitchen eating dinner and my dad to start the car up and shake the whole house and be rumbling like it was pretty amazing it's like wow what is that i remember when he put me in the passenger seat then you take a little piece of tape and then take 100 bill on the dash he says you have to wait when i go if you can reach that hundred dollar bill then it's all yours so he said go and i went to go grab it i was in motion i was just like just put you in the back of the seat i couldn't get it and i was scared that's that's what i do remember i would ride my bike and as a kid you know you don't care you're just throwing your bike in the garage and then put it right next to the car and when the bike falls over and hits the car you're like oops and you hope your dad didn't see it i really wish thinking about that time that i didn't do that but you know things happen and it's part of the car's story and history now [Music] i had a very good relationship with my father i mean i probably had the best relationship a son could have with his father he supported me in a lot of the things that i did i used to race rc cars he helped me tune the car and set the motor he spotted the car for me i used to win a lot of races and he cheered me on and i used to lose a lot of races but he just tell me he says you know what don't worry about it you know just get back on track we had a lot of good times together my mom drove the car that was kind of cool thing that your mom driving a hemi car you know yeah not too many guys couldn't say that he used it right up i mean he put 45 000 miles on it he put a trailer hitch on a hemi car like who go figure right he did that because he loved the ride bikes oh he loved bikes just as much as he loves the car i asked him if he would go camping he goes no i'm on my motorcycles in um 77 i went back into the army and i went into the special forces group and uh i got my green beret i became a green beret for older guy to go back into the military that's why he always say had to show these young boys how to do it my dad you know he was on the 82nd airborne after he did that he went back in so he calls himself the zulu warrior so that's what those stickers are for on both sides [Music] during the 80s and 90s the current just basically sat in the garage it just sat and sat and sat there was other things that were more important and that was his family just life took over the car disappeared just completely disappeared he put the car in the garage in blocks and nobody knew where the car went they all thought it was wrecked or something it meant a whole world to him because it was something that he had that no one else had and when it come time to sell it was the sentimental value he couldn't let it go one gentleman came from canada with cash and he offered him i think at that time 85 000 i said why didn't you take he said nah no it's a part of me it was a part of him i never saw this car until 1980 and that was by a fluke there was a guy on the east side we'd swap parts his name was steve petrovic i was over there it was like saturday around 1 30 in the afternoon and godfrey had just come over he was trying to get his challenger running and steve in his yugoslavian accent these this dude he raised on the street him he don't have any good i'm well known for a lot of rare hemi cars so i said yeah i'll take a look at what you got he never really said nothing he just said i got a 70 hemi challenger but it's been parked i'd like to get a run and start driving again so when we went over there you know this is a one and a half car garage non-insulated he had locks on it he opened up the door and he had the car kind of covered up except for the hood the first thing i seen was a brand new nos shaker hood up against the wall in the right corner the ultimate option the shaker hood and i said oh you bought that to put on the car after he ordered it he goes no well my dad originally ordered the car it was supposed to have to shake her hood the 426 hemi available on challenger rt sews this shaker hood the shaker hood's a special hood so that the top of the engine can stick up above the hood and as the engine's running you could see it shake and allows fresh air to come into the engine to give you a little bit more power strangers will tell me hey you're dead that's supposed to be a shaker car and he never got to shake i'm like what really the dealership salesman told me if you want a shaker hood go order a cuda the salesman really made him mad that's why he went after me when he sued him right yeah that's that sounds like my dad that's that's how he looks he was quiet until he was a man i think when he won that shaker hood the judge said the dealership he bought it from has to put it on the car for you know that's part of his deal but he said i'll never i'll never leave it at the dealership because he knew the porters would be out on the back streets tearing the heck out of his car while they were doing it so that's why he never put the hood on they didn't make it available until after he successfully sued him so april 15th of 70 they sent a memo to dealers the shaker hood is now available this car has significance to any chrysler enthusiast the challenger shaker hood became available in late of 70 was because of godfrey in this car the first thing i said i said how much you want for the shaker he goes nope i can't sell it he goes it goes to my car and i said okay let's let's see what you got and then when he took the blankets off the top and i seen the gator grain the sc package i about had a heart attack you know i was like wow i just said where did you get this girl he goes i special ordered it this is my baby he said i used to go up on woodward once in a while and i'd run a few guys and then i'd come home it's all sinking in that this is the ghost this is the legend and here i am looking at it everybody on the west side east side to this day they're still talking about this car it was just phenomenal that after all these years here is the black ghost you know i couldn't get it running it was getting no spark so as soon as i opened up the gas cap i could smell the gas was bad so i said well we can't use that you're gonna have full tank and we're going to have to clean it or maybe get a new tank and sending unit but instead i said we can just run a rubber hose into a gas can off the fuel pump but when i took the distributor cap off it was all corroded bad from sitting in this garage i said well godfrey i'll take the distributor home i'll clean it i'll set the dual points i made a special tool to prime the oil pump with the distributor out and then the sunday i went back over and it fired right up once we put a gas can primed it that car fired up like it was just said a week ago i mean it ran phenomenally the look on his face i'd never seen such a smile he was like my baby lives i stayed in touch with him for quite a few years but i was still living in detroit last time i talked to him was 1990 but he never drove the car after that sunday we had it running when we first had gregory my son my dad was very excited he was very proud of us during that time i needed a babysitter so we would drop little gregory off to my dad and he would hang with them all day long my dad would take him everywhere he went he called him his little road dog because he's always hanging with them it was a good moment for me now my son gets the chance to spend time with my dad like i did one time in around 2014 he called me over say son when should come over and have a beer with me he says okay we're going to go in the garage and i said okay dad we're going to garage we want to talk about something he starts uncovering the car he didn't really say much and i looked at it and i said wow you know it's a nice car the more i start looking at the car the more interest i start building in the car and i said you know what dad this car's so dusty let's just clean it up and we did that together and we just wiped down the car and it was pretty good experience you know i didn't know at that time i think he was trying to tell me that he was sick he had prostate cancer he had it in 2008 then he had the surgery and it went to remission so we thought you know i'm thinking no my dad's gonna be around for a while the doctor said he was you know i'm thinking okay you got over that yay and it came back and uh it metastasized into bone cancer and then you know things start going downhill from there i went to go visit my dad in the hospital it was around december 21st he said son i'm going to draw you a map because it's hard for me to explain and i want you to go follow this map and get the envelope from me and i want you to bring it up to the hospital tomorrow the next day i go back to the house and i follow his little map and i found his envelope so i get to the hospital and he opens up the envelope and it's all the paperwork for the car and he just signed the title right there and gave me the title it almost put me in tears because i never wanted the car that way as he hands me the title to the car he says don't give my car away that's exactly how he said it that's what he said my dad passed christmas eve in 2015. i knew he wanted the funeral to be small i said there's 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 he'll put take his shirt off and give it to you that's the type of person he was his spirit that's what i miss the most you know that you know yeah we can do it you know he's my hero to me [Music] and the only problem with it think about them sometimes they i miss them when i met him he used to tell me you had this car and it was just in a garage covered with blankets and other stuff on it and there's this car but then after he passed maybe two or three months then we start getting calls i'm sorry about 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 people kept calling about this car later i realized that he had all these parts in the back trunk of the car and they were to restore the car that's when i kind of knew that he wanted to show this car i felt you know what i had to take this thing to car show i mean i have to you know i brought it home and i was on a mission to get it running a few people like my appraisers and stuff were looking at it and says well you know i don't know if this thing's gonna run you don't have to get the car restored and when you're hearing all these things and you're just thinking like wow like 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 go into the engine too much because we were afraid of what would happen we start turning bolts and they break on us and then i thought about it i said well let's keep the car as original as possible for right now until we get a chance to talk to a few people and see what's the best course of action you know what should i do i figured all these years you know somebody got it but i've never seen the car pop up until about four years ago and a guy that i grew up with in detroit calls me up wanting a hemi dual point distributor for a 70 challenger i said mike what do you need uh you need a heavy-duty 0.4 he goes i work for this guy and he's got a little hot rod shop in detroit and they're trying to get this 70 challenger hemi car going i says in detroit he goes yeah i said is this a triple black rtse gator grain 45 000 original miles four-speed houndstooth loaded he was like quiet for a minute he was yeah how do you know i says i know the owner i know the owner i said give him my phone number and have him call me he goes well i'm sad to say that he passed away his son has it and they wanted to get it running i says tell him please let me see the car before they touch it this car is very rare and original so it took about a week and a half for them to warm up to me but when mike told them i knew the car and i knew his dad you know i got reacquainted with the black ghost now i know how the smile he had ah i was like no i'm getting goose bumps this is it to me this car is the coolest car that i've ever been associated with and had the luck to work on it so we put fresh plugs in it fresh wires and now it's time the moment of truth will it start up it's been sitting for 37 years we'll see what happens all right probably the first three or four tries they didn't want to start he had nothing this is like oh but as my dad always say never give up okay we gotta try another time this is our what fifth time and eventually we turn the key and it started right up [Music] and it was just like wow it was kind of a big rush and i'm like yeah so now we gotta keep it running next step from there when we start doing other things like the brakes that took another couple months we had to replace 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 come out of the garage for the first time on its own power that was a sight oh yeah that was that was the moment that was just like yes dad i did it you know but we did it we got it on the road for the first time i said greggy come on get in the car we'll take it for a spin arrive hello we're in the 1970s dodge heavy challenges you just have a good old time you spend like 30 minutes out on the road doing 25 miles an hour you know cruising yeah i just love the way the car drives you know it's kind of unique it's different i feel connected to it when i'm actually driving and shifting every time i actually get in the car and drive it i can feel my dad's presence and the spirit there my actual first big event was at mccakin at the muscle car corvette nationals in chicago it made me feel good it made me feel proud my wife my daughter gregory and i we all go out and we just have a good old time we took this to the autorama and a lot of people came said that is that such a such car and is that chica where's godfrey at i saw i'm sorry but he passed like why and i had he was off somewhere i had to call him back said this guy knows and get more just to get the story it was just amazing i found out about the street racing people come up to me and says yeah you know i've seen that car i know that this car is a legend that's a myth and i'm like what yeah your dad used to race down the alleys of detroit that's when we figured it out and started investigating ourselves and then he got in touch with other family members and like he did what and he was like no he couldn't i said who would make up stories like that that he used to drag race put slicks on and take off as a cop i started doing research on the car and started studying the facts i became a car guy every time we take the car out it's always an interest all black hemi car with a gator green top a lot of people haven't seen a car with the top like that i want it to be a survivor car like you know because that's what it is it's only original watch right it's still unrestored and it still runs great it's never been touched it still has the original valve cover gaskets the intake motor's never been apart never been out of the car [Music] to see that car for me it brought back a lot of memories that i didn't even think about happy once yeah man like i said man that's 50 years ago i mean you know way back man waiting hey with coffee and his son it's very touching to me too because i've seen it from day one it's a good feeling so there was one army man in the car and my dad basically had that because of the military and so my son saw that and said hey you know that's gq so then he goes back in the house and he finds two little army men and then he says you know what these belong with the car and then he sticks them in the car and then my son says that's gq you dad and me he's carrying on his father's legacy and he could have sold it too my plans is to keep the car so go down to a third generation it's awesome i like taking rides in it how does this guy make you feel me again like jq you know it's something about that car that they hold on to i think my dad be proud i think he'd be smiling down almost from cheek to cheek [Music] you
Info
Channel: Historic Vehicle Association
Views: 3,555,398
Rating: 4.919559 out of 5
Keywords: historicvehicleassociation, dodge, challenger, muscle car, blackghost, qualls, hagerty, hva, cars, automotive, national vehicle register, historic vehicle association, vintage cars, classic cars, driving, autos, documentary, 1970s, mopar, unrestored, HEMI, 426 hemi, racing, street racing, drag racing
Id: Jd0io1zktqI
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 39min 15sec (2355 seconds)
Published: Thu Dec 17 2020
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