Crazy Stripe Combinations of the 1970 Dodge Challenger

While attending MCACN in November 2023, I found a Dodge that caught my eye. Under the hood resided a 440 Six Pack, one of over 1,600 hardtops built with that engine, so not the first I’ve seen. From the front, it looked like any “FJ5” Sublime Challenger with the “V21” hood stripe. However, what truly distinguished this Mopar was a feature from the rear.

This Challenger was equipped with the famous Bumblebee stripe, but this one was yellow. Lime green and yellow? That’s kinda neat! But if you didn’t know any better, you’d think only black or white, and red stripes were available. That would have been true for previous members of Dodge’s Scat Pack, but the 1970 Challenger R/T (and “A66” Challenger 340) were different.

Interestingly, the Bumblebee stripe was not standard on the Challenger R/T, a misconception easily understood since Scat Pack vehicles were “the cars with the Bumblebee stripes” per the advertisements of the time. For these performance Challengers, if you selected the Bumblebee stripe, you had a choice of many colors per the chart above: medium blue, light green, Sublime, Banana, Hemi Orange, red, Plum Crazy, tan metallic, Go Mango, beige, white, and black. As you can see from the chart, the Banana stripe could be paired with “FC7” Plum Crazy or Sublime.

You don’t often see this or the other combinations, but they are out there as several have appeared in magazines and can be found online. Yet it still begs the question how the Challenger was available with a crazy variety of Bumblebee stripes but other members of the Scat Pack were not: It’s because the Challenger’s Bumblebee stripe was paint, so all the factory had to do is mask the rear and spray on a hue. All other Bumblebee stripes from 1968-70 were decals, so there was no flexibility in color.

It’s as simple as that! So, what combination would you choose? And can you think of some neat combos that were not in the recommended list?