It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with everything to do with 1971 Dodge Chargers. They came in so many cool varieties such as R/Ts and Super Bees and were available in the coolest colors. You had Citron Yella, Plum Crazy Purple, Green Go; the list goes on and on. Over the years, I’ve owned two 1971 Charger R/Ts and two 1971 Charger Super Bees so needless to say, they’re one of my favorite Mopars ever built.
About 8 years ago, a good friend of mine, Dean Meneghetti told me about a B5 Blue 1971 Super Bee sitting in a driveway in Abbotsford, British Columbia where it had sat for a long time. He said it had been there since at least the 1990’s. I looked it up on Google Maps and sure enough, there was the car right out in the open. Some years during Google Maps’ drive-by, it even had a mattress on top of it. Eventually it was covered up with a cheap indoor car cover.
I drove by numerous times hoping to see someone to talk to about the car but nobody was ever outside. I stopped by a couple of times but there was never any answer at the door so I left a note with my name and number. One day in 2018 while towing my 1971 Charger R/T project through the area, I stopped by with the Charger in tow hoping it would lead to someone answering the door. I knocked and a younger boy answered. I asked if his parents were home so I could talk to someone about the Super Bee. He said they weren’t so once again, no luck.
On my way back down the driveway, I stopped and took a quick peek at the Super Bee. The first thing I noticed was the 340 Magnum call outs on the hood. This caught my attention quickly as I knew that 340 Super Bees were fairly rare with only 307 total being built. I didn’t want to loiter too much so I did a quick once over of the car and left. I noticed it had a blue bucket seat interior, black vinyl top and was a column shift automatic.
Over the next few years, I would continue to drive by but never saw anyone outside. In June 2023, I was surfing Facebook Marketplace late one night and came across an ad for a 1971 Charger that had a generic Google picture of a restored blue 1971 Super Bee as the photo.
The ad showed the location as Abbotsford and said, “VERY RARE 1971 Dodge Charger Super Bee. 340, 727 auto, all original. NEEDS FULL RESTORATION. Been sitting for years. Have papers. I might change my mind tomorrow, so if you want it, act now. Serious inquiries ONLY. PRICE IS FIRM!! Do not contact me if you aren’t interested in buying it.”
I knew it had to be the same car I had been chasing. The price was more than I thought it was worth but I thought I’d try and contact the guy. I messaged the seller and explained that I had a yellow 1971 Super Bee and that I was super interested in his. He replied back, gave me his phone number and told me to come after work the next day. Sure enough, the address he gave was the address for the same house.
When I arrived at the house the next day, the seller appeared to be a somewhat shadier fellow riding a mountain bike. He explained that him and his ex-wife had gotten divorced years prior and the car was sitting in her driveway. He came upon some harder times and needed to sell the car to buy a daily driver.
The car was super rough; way rougher than I had originally thought. Years of sitting outside in the weather had taken a toll. The vinyl top had basically eaten away the whole roof skin to swiss cheese. The quarter panels had rotted out and the floors were super soft. He explained that a friend had locked the keys in the car years ago so he wasn’t able to get into it.
He told me he had purchased it around 1989 from a used car lot in Surrey, British Columbia. He was out cruising with a buddy in his green Super Bee when they came across the blue one up on the podium out front with an asking price around $4,000.
The car had been freshly redone with new paint and interior. He purchased the car and drove it for a few years. One winter around 1995, he forgot to make sure the radiator had enough coolant versus water in it and cracked the block. He started taking the engine apart and never finished it. When it was parked, it was a beautiful show quality car. After that, the car just sat and rotted away.
He also mentioned he had come across a wrecked Hemi Orange 1971 Super Bee 340 in a Surrey wrecking yard in the 1990s so he bought basically everything he could off of that one; doors, fenders, hideaways, spoilers, trim and the 340 from it and everything came with the blue car.
Before I could even make an offer, he dropped his asking price in half and said that was his bottom dollar. I jumped on it instantly and told him he had a deal. He told me we could meet back up again that night to exchange money and he’d give me the papers for the car. Without going into detail, that was a bit of a nightmare and ended up turning into a 2 day ordeal as it turns out trying to meet up with a guy on a bicycle who barely answers his phone proves to be a little difficult.
Once I had finally paid for the car and transferred it into my name (he did have the papers in his name), my family and I went over with a couple of buddies and my trailer on a hot summer day to load it up. The seller explained that we could go get the car and then he’d dig out the extra parts over the next couple of days.
What an even bigger nightmare that turned out to be! I can honestly say I’ve never had a car fight me as much as this one did! Getting the extra parts out of him turned into a nightmare all on its own but I eventually managed to get almost everything that was promised.
He had mentioned originally that the keys were locked in the car so I had a tow company come to try and get into it but they had zero luck after fighting with it for 30 minutes. Knowing I had quite a few pieces of extra door glass at home, I decided to punch out the driver’s window; only to find the only set of keys in it were for a snow mobile. Without the keys, the steering was locked and the car was locked in parked. Great.
Thankfully I came prepared with wheel dollies and a compressor. We pumped up all of the tires which surprisingly held air and started winching it onto the trailer. Of course my luck, the second the old dry cracked tires touched the trailer ramps, they blew apart.
We kept winching away and finally got the car loaded up on the trailer. We cleaned up all of the broken glass from the ex-wife’s driveway and made sure everything was spotless for her so she could have her driveway back. Special thank you to my wife Kailley and good friends Erik Teigland and Kyle Tanaka for the hand loading it!
