Son Buys 1974 Dodge Challenger Parked for 30 Years, Now Dad Might Want It Back

The new owner of the 1974 Dodge Challenger, Ryan, wants to get the car up and running again after 30 years it spent in a barn, hidden from sunlight and away from the road. He has just bought the muscle car from his father, who had purchased the Challenger for his ex-wife, the new owner's mom.

However, they ended up getting a divorce. They both knew their priorities. He got the car, she got the house. But the last time he drove it was in 1994. It was then that he parked it and never took it out of the barn for the next 30 years.

But his son has had enough of looking at the car rotting away in the barn. So, he decided to buy it from his father and is now trying to revive it. The first wash in 30 years is the first step he takes. Next up, he will do an engine swap. He is going to transplant a HEMI heart from a Ram under the hood of the 50-year-old Challenger.

When the car arrived at the detailing studio, they thought that unstrapping it off the trailer and rolling it down would be easy. It usually is. But it started on the wrong foot as the winch cable somehow got stuck under the car. They finally managed to release it from its entrapment.

It only took one look at the car for the detailing expert to label it as "horrendous." The trunk lid, rear glass, roof, windshield, and hood are covered in piles of bird droppings. Eight-legged creatures (as in spiders, of course, no octopus involved here!) still roam around the car. However, the side panels don’t look half as bad.

The interior of the 1974 Dodge Challenger was a castle for mice

If you think that the interior can’t get any worse than that, well, guess again. It's been the home of mice for ages. And they were not exactly fond of keeping their home clean.

The all-purpose cleaner is a start, but the rear glass and trunk lid will need a degreaser before the pressure wash. The windshield and the hood will have to go through the same procedure.

Because the original engine of the Challenger is going straight to the scrap yard after the car gets cleaned, power washing the engine bay, even though not usually recommend it, is all right this time. Nothing of the stock assembly will remain under the hood, so the owner doesn’t care what happens to the original engine. He contacted us and confirmed the engine that is in the car right now is not original, nor is it rebuildable.

The detailer removes the seats, and what he finds under them is absolutely gross. A family of mice must have had a home in there. But vacuuming does miracles on the carpet, which cleans up nicely.

But the seats will surely be a headache. The vinyl on the seats has turned to braids. It might be the poor quality of the material or the mice having their way with the driver's seat. Either way, reupholstering is the only way out of this predicament.

The Challenger, the bigger, the better

This Dodge Challenger rolled off the production line during the last year of assembly of the first generation. The E-Body muscle car, a twin of the Plymouth Barracuda, looked effortlessly cool. Back in the 1970s, designed by Carl Cameron, who was also responsible for the looks of the 1966 Dodge Charger, the Challenger looked effortlessly cool with all its rough edges and mean look.

The model was designed to fight the Ford Mustang, but it came out larger in every direction, which wasn't necessarily a deficiency by American standards. Because, hey, it was the 70s and customers still went by the "the bigger, the better" principle. But it came a little bit too late.

Dodge only built around 165,000 first-generation Challengers between 1970 and 1974. By the time the model hit the market, the pony car segment was already collapsing. The Challenger production stopped midway through the 1974 model year, and this 1974 example is one of the survivors and one of the last to see the light of day.

Now, it will be reborn from under thick layers of dirt. The paint and the chrome details on the car end up looking new. Who would have thought that 30 years of filth can be erased in several hours of detailing?

For sure, the son of the original owner didn't. "That is insane!" he says among a gazillion "wows" and "Oh, my gosh!" The engine swap will come next. But this is definitely a pretty good-looking car to start with despite backlash from people who claim the engine swap is unthinkable.

"The truth is I don't care what people think. I want to drive it and enjoy it; I'll never sell it as far as “value” goes. It’s not an R/T, or a T/A, or a 1970, or a Hemi car. It's a base Challenger from about the least desirable year out there. The car is special to me and I’m making it my own," Ryan says. Who can blame him?