Bill Goldberg celebrated April Fools’ Day 2024 in style by taking delivery of his 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. And like the huge Mopar nut he is, he ordered a one-of-a-kind unit finished in Green Machine, an optional hue given to only a few VIP customers. Having parked the modern 1,025-horsepower muscle car in his garage, Mr. Goldberg decided it was time to take an old-school rig out of storage.
Bill owns quite a few classics and admits he doesn’t have the time to drive all of them. Luckily, his relatively new YouTube series prompted the wrestler and former American football player to revive a Mopar he has barely touched in over a decade. It’s a gorgeous 1970 Dodge Coronet R/T he purchased at auction in 2008 and kept in storage until now.
Well, he actually drove it for around 30 miles (48 km), but that probably happened right after he bought it. He then parked the Coronet on a lift for a whopping 16 years. Fortunately, the Mopar was stored properly, and it looks like it just rolled off the assembly line. Sure, the carburetors need a bit of tuning, but this Coronet R/T is spotless and ready to win classic car events across the US.
And like most classic cars in Bill’s garage, this hardtop is a rare gem. Yes, the Coronet is nowhere near as scarce as the Super Bee. While the latter moved 15,506 units, the Coronet sold nearly 100,000 examples in 1970. But this one is an R/T, and this high-performance trim wasn’t as popular due to high insurance rates at the time. Specifically, Dodge sold only 2,615 of them, which is less than 3% of the total production.
But Bill’s Coronet is decidedly scarcer than that. First, it has a 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) Six-Pack V8 under the hood. Yeah, it’s no HEMI, but only 194 customers selected this mill in 1970. The automatic Torqueflite gearbox narrows it down even more to just 97 units. Finally, this Coronet wears a triple-black suit, a color combo that turns it into one of only 18 built like this.
Introduced in 1969, the Six-Pack version of the 440 big-block V8 slotted right between the four-barrel 440 and the range-topping 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) HEMI. Thanks to its trio of two-barrel carburetors, it delivered 390 horsepower, only 35 horses below the HEMI. Torque was identical at 490 pound-feet (664 Nm). All told, this Coronet has plenty of oomph to throw around.
This configuration turned the R/T into a 14-second car down the drag strip. And it got there while hitting 60 mph (97 kph) in less than seven seconds). You won’t see Bill making straight-line passes in the car, but he just couldn’t refrain from doing a few burnouts and donuts. Hopefully, this Coronet will get more on-road action after a proper engine tune-up. This superb Mopar should spend its retirement on a lift.
