KING MOPAR!
THE CHARGER WAS DESTINED FOR ICON STATUS
THE MOMENT THE COVERS WERE WHIPPED OFF IT
Hey Charger! It was the simple catch cry of the famous TV ad that thrust the Chrysler Valiant Charger into the motoring and motorsport spotlight in August 1971. Sitting on a shortened wheelbase of the current Valiant sedan of the time, the Charger was introduced within the VH series and its success was immediate.
Demand swamped supply. It won a major touring car race on debut. Wheels magazine awarded it the 1971 Car of the Year and its popularity was such that at one point it accounted for 80 per cent of all Australian VH Valiant production.
The Charger was with us for just seven years and was initially built to suit many budgets. In 1971 the $2795 base model was exactly that: a three-on-the-tree manual, skinny steel wheels, vinyl trim, no radio, no heater and a 215ci straight six in its snout.
But the variants that cemented the Charger’s
"KING OF THE CATALOGUE WAS THE R/T E49 WITH A PRODUCTION RUN OF NINE MONTHS AND 149 UNITS"
legendary status among Aussie muscle car aficionados were the Road and Track or R/T models of which just 1300 were produced and only in the VH Series. There was one automatic base model, 630 base models with a three-speed manual, 60 base models with a four-speed manual, 134 four-speed E37s, two E48s plus 316 E38s of which 82 had big tanks.
King of the catalogue was the R/T E49 with a production run of nine months and 149 units. Launched June 1972 it came with a sticker price of $3975. It was built with the objective of driving up and down Mount Panorama Bathurst on the October Labour day weekend 130 times, and faster than any other car.
Standard kit included a blacked-out grille, vertical stripes on the front guards sporting the number ‘4’ indicating it’s an E49, plus side stripes that flowed onto the rear of the upswept tail. There were also quartz-halogen headlights, full instrumentation, an aluminium steering wheel and wild colour names; Vitamin C, Hemi Orange, Hot Mustard and Mercury Silver.
Of the 149 produced just 21 were fitted with the A84 Track Pack option comprising a 160-litre fuel tank to gain an on-track advantage by reducing the number of pitstops, along with a quick-ratio 16:1 steering box, 14 x 7-inch alloy wheels and heavy-duty disc front brakes and rear drums.
The R/T E49 gained a BorgWarner four-speed manual gearbox after its predecessor made use of a pace-restricting three-speeder.
Although the R/T E49 shared the same displacement engine as before, the triple Weber carburettor-fed 4.3-litre Hemi-six was given a serious boost of grunt jumping from 280 to 302 horsepower, an unprecedented figure for a six-cylinder engine and only surpassed in 1975 by the Porsche Turbo 911.