1971 Dodge Challenger R/T is Built to Go Fast

Blast from the Past

For Bryan Doyle, the childhood dream of speed and style manifested in miraculous Mopar muscle. Doyle’s influence came from a different kind of Trans AM.  As a child, he looked on while his father and uncle helped a fellow racer and Mopar enthusiast named Tom Cannon restore a 1970 Challenger T/A.  1970 is arguably the pinnacle year for American Muscle cars and watching his dad and uncle working on a Hemi Orange Challenger built to go head to head on the street with Corvettes and Chevelles, was the right kind of magic to ignite Doyle’s passion.

Childhood Dream

Doyle’s father passed on his knowledge of internal combustion engines to his son, spending countless hours of quality time working on and restoring muscle cars.  When Doyle finished high school, his father gave him the best graduation present he could imagine, his own project car.  When the young man returned home from a friend’s house one night, his father opened the tailgate of his pickup truck and showed Doyle the grille and door panel of a 1971 Challenger R/T.  The next weekend he began dissembling and cataloging the parts of a gold ’71 Challenger.

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Mopar Muscle

The original car would have had a 383 motor with a four-barrel carburetor.  It had an automatic transmission with power steering and power brakes.  The Challenger had a flat hood with hood pins and a dual exhaust system. Unfortunately, the car’s original 383 motor had been replaced with a smaller engine.  The original drivetrain was gone and the car was missing a lot of the features that make Challengers sexy.

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Stripped

Doyle decided to make the car his own.  With a clean slate, he started building the car of his dreams.  He stripped the Challenger down to the bare bones, cutting away pieces of rusted metal and media blasting the remaining shell. After massive amounts of bodywork, Doyle and his father placed the car on a rotisserie and sprayed it dark blue. They reassembled the car with an enhanced suspension system and a Wilwood disc brake system. 

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Raw Power

There's no place like home. The Challenger’s new powerplant came from a 1975 Dodge camper.  The motorhome’s 440 motor was transplanted under the Challenger’s hood and given some special tweaks by Doug Meyers at Automotive Machining Services in Pennsylvania. After a laundry list of upgrades and special modifications, Doyle was able to bring his ’71 Challenger to the track. He keeps pushing the limits of his car and improving its performance.  To date, he has a personal best of 11.35 seconds at 121.5 mph in the quarter-mile.

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