![]() I decided that he must not have a clue who he was messing with and commenced to put the pedal flat on the floor and chase him down. ![]() “Very late one night on Interstate I-96 while returning from my own bachelor party, a white Corvette blew right by me like I was sitting still. The 4:10 gears were ok for zero-to-sixty type sprints from a stoplight, but things got pretty limited at expressway speeds,” said Dennis. The car seemed to attract invitations to race, and I often obliged. “Unfortunately, I was not as kind to the drivetrain as I was to the body. Dennis, like many muscle car owners of the era, was not easy on his hopped-up machines. But how his Six Pack Super Bee survived the ravages of time is another tale. I did a bit of bracket racing at Milan and Tri-City Dragway, but a whole lot of street racing as well,” reminisced Dennis. “During my junior year at Michigan State University, I bought a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner, and I was hooked on Mopars. Since Dennis was raised in the Detroit area and his father owned a trucking company that was contracted by Chrysler, he was a “Mopar Guy” way before the Super Bee came into his life. Since all 1969 Six Pack Super Bees came from the factory with a lift-off fiberglass hood held on by four hood pins, these guys would always be confused, but they thought the fiberglass hood was very cool.” I loved driving it, and when I’d get gas, I’d ask the station attendants to check the oil as they would scratch their heads looking for a hood latch. “So, I started reversing the modifications the previous owner had made, and the car began to run quicker and quicker. The Super Bee was brutal on the street and the car’s crazy driving manners and throttle response was either off or on, nothing in between,” noted Dennis. So, off I went to the strip with it to see how fast the car would run. “When I took possession of the Super Bee from my dad in 1973, it already had headers, a hotter cam, traction bars and terrible progressive linkage on the three Holley carbs. Some did survive, but many became extinct over the years.Įven though the Super Bee was just a few years old when Dennis became its new owner, it had already had a hard life racing around the mean streets of Detroit. While not as significant as discovering an ancient Roman palace or a woolly mammoth, the 1969 Six Pack Super Bee is still a rare piece that represented the high-water mark in Detroit’s muscle car wars. It was like an ancient relic that was unearthed, and National Geographic was on the scene with an army of archeologists. There were even a few folks documenting things on the Super Bee like the placement of underhood emission decals, factory paint overspray, the layout and spacing of the Bumble Bee stripe, and other nuances one looks for on a car that’s never been restored or hacked to death by prior owners. ![]() While other show attendees casually walked past the Super Bee, enthusiasts that know what a gem this is swarmed around the vehicle checking out this living example that epitomized Dodge’s commitment to producing over-the-top machines exceeding their owner’s expectations when they planted their right foot hard on the accelerator pedal. ![]() ![]() It was the annual North Oakland Mopar ® Muscle Car Show and Swap Meet, and there was no shortage of rare and iconic cars from Chrysler’s illustrious history of building fast and affordable machines for mass consumption. “Just how did this car survive 50 years of abuse and still have original paint and look this good?” commented the older gentleman to his buddy as they walked past the R4 Bright Red (that looks more like orange) 1969 Dodge Six Pack Super Bee nestled among the trees on the lawn at the old Packard Proving Grounds. ![]()
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