{"id":82120,"date":"2024-10-11T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T06:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=82120"},"modified":"2024-10-10T12:08:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T16:08:42","slug":"the-challenger-who-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/owners-clubs\/2024\/10\/the-challenger-who-challenges.html","title":{"rendered":"The Challenger Who Challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Ten for Ten” read the headline in the March 1992 issue of Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> Muscle<\/em> magazine. Ten years to build, a ten-second car on the drag strip. Well, time goes on, and everything changes. Except for the Confederate Quickie, which looks the same today as it did 32 years ago. Now, Per Sundberg’s 1970 Dodge Challenger is back on the drag strip, but this time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Old warriors rarely change their stripes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Mopar Muscle<\/em> report is minimalistic. Three photos, including one where Quickie does a sleek wheel lift. A single column of text, “That’s all, folks”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m flipping through Per Sundberg’s copy of the magazine. He\u2019s well-acquainted with everything written there and, after some research, knows even more.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The car was rebuilt for the first time during the 1970s to run in Super Stock class. From the factory, the Dodge was an H-coded car with a 340-cubic-inch (cui) engine. Before it raced in Super Stock, it got a 440 cui engine with a six-pack, meaning three two-barrel carburetors. It\u2019s said that the car was part of a race team focused on Mopar \u2014 the Fast Forward team \u2014 during its first ten years on the drag strip,”
Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Randy Bouchillon is the owner and rebuilder of the car. Somewhere along the way, the V8 got new internals parts and was refined. The 440 cubic inches were stroked to 512 cui. Fred Swing from Dixie Twister Racing Engines handled the work, and that\u2019s how the engine is still configured in 2024, according to Sundberg. He’s not exactly sure what\u2019s inside the V8, but we’ll get back to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Besides being H-coded from the factory, it also seems to be an A66. During the Orsa Drag Fest, a guy came up to me, and he was quite excited. He mentioned this about the A66, a fairly rare package that included R\/T suspension and SE interior with leather seats. These features are still in the car today,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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During the rebuild that Mopar Muscle reports on, Quickie was transformed into a fine Bracket Racing car. In addition to the Dana 60 rear axle, leaf springs with ladder bars, and a prepped 727 transmission, the Challenger was equipped with air shifting. Something convenient for Bracket Racing with dial-in.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The air shifter is meant for consistent passes on the drag strip where the times shouldn’t differ much from one another. You hold the transbrake and then floor it. After that, the car takes care of the rest, more or less automatically,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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So, what times has Sundberg achieved on the drag strip with his Dodge? So far, he\u2019s only run it once or twice a year over the past three years. In 2024, he clocked 6.72 seconds over 201 meters. Having said that, Quickie should still be a ten-second car over 402 meters. However, it’s worth noting that Sundberg has only run on completely unprepped tracks so far, so there’s room to shave off some tenths of a second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sundberg has no trouble explaining why he loves his Dodge Challenger. At 57 years old, he remembers his youth in the 1980s back home in Dalarna on traditional Swedish drag strips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I’ve always been a Super Stock fanatic. I’ve drooled over Swedish drivers like Magnus Tannfelt with his 1971 Super Stock HEMI\u00ae<\/sup> \u2019Cuda, and then there’s Stig Paln\u00e9r. Yeah, I got hooked on this drag racing class,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then adds that it would be fun to someday race Quickie in Super Stock class. But that would require some work on the Challenger. Sundberg was somewhat surprised by how much the Dodge’s front suspension had been modified when the car arrived in Sweden in 2021, and the 512 cubic inches wouldn’t fit in that class either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Speaking of the Challenger\u2019s arrival in Sweden, Sundberg found it for sale in a Facebook group for old drag racing cars and tagged a friend in the U.S. who works with inspecting and exporting American cars to Sweden. The friend, named G\u00f6ran Lasell, missed this but also saw the car and tagged Sundberg. Not long after, Lasell was on site to inspect the car more closely. Then the Dodge was bought, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The car arrived in Sweden at the G\u00e4vle harbour in September 2021. It originated in South Carolina. Why do I like cars from Mopar? I really like the design from the 1960s and \u201970s. Super cool cars. But I\u2019m not so fanatical that it\u2019s only Mopar that matters,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Are there future plans for the Challenger? Oh yes. Sundberg has plenty of ideas about things to fix, rebuild, tweak or maybe detune. Yeah, perhaps switch from 512 cubic inches to 440. It all depends, as usual, on what time and money allow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I’m going to register the car for the street. Make it street-legal in Sweden. Fix a new electrical system, including turn signals, so it can be driven on our roads. Then update the roll cage, because it’s awful and extends too far into the cabin instead of being close to the roof pillars. The roll cage tag? I haven\u2019t quite decided yet. But concerning tagging and safety, my friend Conny Bondesson was right when he recently came up and said, ‘Nixon was president the last time your belts were approved\u2026’ I guess the same goes for that roll cage,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He adds that he’s going to open up the engine and check its condition and what\u2019s inside. It\u2019s a bit of a mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I’m going to check the status of the cylinder heads and valve springs. Replace whatever\u2019s necessary. Then, as I said, I’ll focus on the roll cage, but also a new steering column and going through the transmission,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sounds like you’re going to keep your Dodge for a while?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Yeah, it\u2019s probably a keeper. I\u2019ll just try to drive it more than once a year on the drag strip in the future,” Sundberg says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Note to readers: Feel free to contact Per Sundberg if you have more information about the car\u2019s background and history. Sundberg can be reached at per@pemi.se<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“Ten for Ten” read the headline in the March 1992 issue of Mopar\u00ae Muscle magazine. Ten years to build, a ten-second car on the drag strip. Well, time goes on, and everything changes. Except for the Confederate Quickie, which looks the same today as it did 32 years ago. Now, Per Sundberg’s 1970 Dodge Challenger is back on the drag strip, but this time on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Old warriors rarely change their stripes. The Mopar Muscle report is minimalistic. Three photos, including one where Quickie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":82131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2624],"tags":[526,3012,528],"class_list":["post-82120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owners-clubs","tag-challenger","tag-dodge-europe","tag-drag-racing"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ChallengerWhoChallenges_Feature-1.jpg","social_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/ChallengerWhoChallenges_Social-1.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82120"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82167,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82120\/revisions\/82167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}