an Gibb may well be one of the
luckiest guys alive. Dan’s out there
living the sweet life in sunny Orange,
California, practically in the
shadow
of Disneyland, having a grand old time with
his wonderful wife
Laura and their two kids. He’s got a sweet V code 1970 Challenger R/T
SE he uses practically daily, he’s had a plethora of old Mopars through
the years, and oh yeah, he’s one of Hugh Hefner’s personal butlers at
the Playboy Mansion. No joke, while you’re at home on any given
evening, Dan’s hard at work making sure Hef and however many bunnies
happen to be around at the time have all their needs met. And that’s
not to mention all the parties held at the Mansion, which Dan works to
make sure everything goes smoothly. Needless to say, it’s hard to find
this boy not smiling 24/7. One
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would think that a guy who is so closely tied to the Playboy
Mansion and Hef himself would be driving some kind of Austin Powers
shagadellic modern machine, but no, when the weather allows, Dan
prefers to toil over the Pistol Grip shifter in this Challenger. So,
while there’s a sea of Porches, Ferraris, and other exotics parked
around the famed domicile, there’s a particular yellow and black Dodge
which always garners more than a passing glance from the bunnies and
visiting celebrities.
The reason Dan the bunny man clings to his faithful yellow Challenger
is quite simple; he’s been a Challenger fanatic since he could drive.
When Dan was sixteen, back in 1978, his first car was a 440 powered R/T
SE ‘70 Challenger that he picked up on the cheap. Being sixteen, he
did what any teenager did with a 375 horse Challenger; he quickly set
about destroying the car. Dan became engrossed with the rapidly
expanding SoCal Mopar community at that time, becoming one of the early
members of the Mopars Unlimited club. He used the Challenger for daily
transportation initially, but as so often happened back then, when you
had a fast car, all you wanted was for it to go faster.
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Since it was a
SE, there were a lot of luxury items on the Challenger which were
slowing it down, so within a year or two, most of the creature comforts
had been stripped out and tossed aside, the 440 had been radically
reworked and sported dual fours atop a tunnel ram intake. Fortunately
for Dan, and for Jim Radke, Dan befriended Radke at an early age. As
the parts came off the rare Challenger, rather than pitch them in the
garbage, most of the goodies were traded to Jim, so very few of the
R/T’s components were wasted. The same cannot be said of the overall
car.
After a few years of racing the Challenger at Orange County and
on back roads everywhere, the Dodge was pretty well dead. The car
wound up being junked in the early 1980's, but the E-body had done its
job in making Dan a hardcore Mopar guy.
Through the years, Dan’s owned Chargers, Darts, you name it. If it
had a pentastar on the fender and was priced right, odds were Dan could
figure out a way to justify
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buying it. Still, as he got older, he
found himself wanting the car he had killed as a teenager and he
realized the serious mistake he’d made in gutting that one. Thinking
he’d never get the chance to make up for the sins of his youth, Dan
kept his eyes open just in case. Then, in 1993, his chance at Mopar redemption came knocking. Since the Mopar network, even around Los Angeles, is very tight, Dan
received word of a ‘70 Challenger R/T SE for sale in Riverside. Better
still, said car was supposed to be a legitimate “V” code 440 Six Pack
four speed car. This was too good to be true! Despite what everyone
else will tell you, this was a case where something that was too good
to be true wound up being true. After a couple phone calls and a trip
over to Riverside, Dan found himself at the home of a hardcore Harley
biker guy - and a rather scary looking dude at that. Sitting in the
driveway was this screaming yellow R/T Challenger looking pretty much
just as you see it here.
The price was lofty for the time, $16,500, so
it took a bit of high financing on Dan’s behalf to make it happen, but
he knew something like this wasn’t going to happen again. So, within a
few days, Dan was back at the biker’s house to scoop up the rumbling
Dodge. So how does a biker guy end up with a rare Six Pack R/T SE?
From what Dan could find out, the yellow Challenger was sold new in
Indiana and spent its formative years there. It was then sold to a
younger guy in North Carolina, who apparently had the car repainted and
then headed for Los Angeles. The younger guy ended up owing the biker
guy some money, yadda, yadda, yadda, and the biker guy ends up with the Challenger.
What Dan latched onto that afternoon in Riverside is a real time
machine and one with an unusual mix of options. The Challenger is
surprisingly original, still retaining its original 440 Six Pack motor
and 833 Hemi four speed hooked to a 3.54 Dana rear. The black leather
interior is original and in outstanding condition, the black vinyl top
is in fantastic shape, and the yellow paint is a touch off the original
Top Banana, but it’s still looking good. The unusual black hood stripe
treatment was done back in the late 1980's when the car was repainted and, since it looks so period perfect, Dan’s never been bothered to get
rid of it. This one left the factory with 15" Rallyes, the deluxe
steering wheel, the leather interior, the pedal dress up package, a
console mounted Pistol Grip, and the longitudinal R/T stripes.
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Typically, SE Challengers are well loaded down with creature comforts,
but while this one has some cosmetic bling, there’s a strange lack of
options you would expect. There’s no power steering, no power brakes,
drum brakes reside on all corners, and there’s only an AM radio for
entertainment. Since this one came out of Indiana years ago, Dan’s
interested in learning more about its past, so if anyone remembers this
one from back when, contact us and we’ll pass the info along to Dan.
So, granted, this isn’t a concours show poodle, but it isn’t meant to
be. This one’s a fun driver and all-around good mover. While Dan
could drive just about anything he wanted back and forth to work, this
one is his mount of choice whenever weather permits. Why? Think about
it, if you had a job so stressful as having to look after Hugh Hefner
and anywhere from ten to maybe over a hundred Playboy bunnies (no joke)
on any given night, what would you want to drive on the way home?
Hey,
a guy’s gotta’ burn off all that pressure from work somehow! By the
time he’s back home in Orange with wife Laura and the kids, Dan’s back
in his average family guy mode again thanks to the soothing hum of
rumbling pipes and an unsilenced oval air cleaner. And, we’re pleased
to say that from what Dan tells us, Hef’s just as down-to-earth and
friendly as we’d all like to think he is. The whole Mansion staff and
Hef’s entourage are more like a big family than workers and employees,
so how cool is that? Okay, now how many of you guys out there are
ready to trade places with Dan right now? The line forms behind us!
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