Cole’s Gold Once A Daily Driver, Now A Show Stopper

You’ve heard it before: Mopar lover finds first car as a teenager, drives it daily (and energetically), then—eventually—sells it. Then, years later, he rediscovers it.

That’s the story of Dale Cole’s ’71 Dodge Challenger R/T, seen here in its restored, trophy-winning condition.

It’s April 1979, and Dale now has his first car.

Flash back to the late ’70s, when Dale found this E-Body. “I bought it in 1979 for $1,500 when I turned 16,” he remembers. “It was my first car, and it was my daily driver for two years.”

Lead-footed driving on the prairie’s unpaved roads weren’t kind to this E-Body. “The body was full of rust, the engine was tired, and the tires were bald,” says Dale, who adds that his ’71 ended up parked along the fence at his parents’ farm. He’d bought a new car and forgot all about his Challenger.

It didn’t stay there for too long. Says Dale, “A friend’s older brother wanted it and I ended up giving him the car, as I had no plans to restore it any time soon.”

Fast forward to 2007, when Dale had the chance to get his one-time daily driver back. “I got a call from my friend, who said that his older brother still had the car. It turned out he never got around to restoring it.” Fortunately, that long-time storage hadn’t caused any further deterioration, inside or out. “It looked as it did when I last saw it 25 years earlier,” recalls Dale. “He never did drive it—it had been sitting with a tarp over it the whole time. The Rallye dash looked almost new.”

Under the hood sits the original E55 340, restored by Kori Alexander to fresh-from-the-Mound Road-Engine-Plant condition

The price was right, too. “I got it back for the same price I sold it for—$0.00.”

Once home, Dale decided to restore it. But documenting what went on it at Hamtramck Assembly wouldn’t be easy. “In 1979 I removed the back seat for cleaning, and I remember finding a build sheet,” says Dale. “Not knowing what it was, I’d thrown it out. When disassembling it, I found a partial build sheet behind the glove box door and under the carpet, and I found a good build sheet under the passenger-side bucket seat. I got lucky!”

That build sheet, along with the fender tag, spelled out what his R/T was built with, including the E55 340 (which included front and rear sway bars), and H5F7 green vinyl/plaid cloth seats with carpeted door trim panels.

This restoration wasn’t an overnight job. “It took five years,” says Dale. “We had to wait for Good mark and AMD to start reproducing some parts, like door skins. Now, you can buy pretty much anything for an E-Body.” He adds, “There were some issues with reproduction parts not fitting or being accurate, so we had to spend extra time fixing [them].”

He credits two shops for transforming the ’71 from a barn-filler to a show-winner. “Mopar restoration specialist Robert Polson of Prairie fire Paint

in Consort, Alberta, did all the sheet metal work, and applied the GY8 Metallic Gold paint, which really pops out at you.” He’s also got kudos for the shop that did the mechanical work. “Kori Alexander, of Show & Go Restoration in Red Deer, Alberta, rebuilt the powertrain, and did the re-assembly,” says Dale. “His knowledge and attention to detail is second to none.”

1971 Dodge Challenger On Road

The result? “It turned out better than I could imagine,” says Dale. “It drives and rides like a new car. Even has the new car smell.”

When he first showed it at Mopars at the Strip, it won the World’s Ultimate Mopar award after a 933-mile (1,500 kilometer) drive to Vegas, right after the resto was finished.

Maybe the Mopar you’re looking for as a project isn’t a rarity like Dale’s (one of 1,078 340-powered ’71 Challenger R/TS), but he’s got some sound advice before you start: “Sit down and draw up your game plan,” he says. “The first thing you need to know is, how far do you want to go with it, and how much to spend. Keep an open mind on your budget, and don’t get depressed when it starts adding up. It seems that you spend a lot before you see any progress. At the end, the finished product was well worth it to me.

“Then find the right people to do the job. I was lucky that we have some good reputable and knowledgeable Mopar people near me, but I had to ship some parts quite a distance to get the right people to do it.”