Capable of zero to 60 mph in less than six seconds and sub-14-second quarter mile times, some of the hottest muscle cars of the late 1960s and early 1970s were so fast that their performance numbers still look strong more than four decades later.
But with bigger power outputs, better tires, more gears and slicker aerodynamics you’d rightly expect to see a modern 2010s muscle car smoke its ancestors in a drag strip head-to-head.
Which is why the result of this face-off between a 1970 Pontiac GTO Judge and a modern Dodge Charger Scat Pack might make you do a double take. The GTO was available with several engines for 1970, the biggest of which was a 455 cu-in. (7.5-liter) V8 rated at 360 hp. But the hottest was the Ram Air IV version of the smaller 400 (6.6-liter), available exclusively as an option on the fancier Judge model, which carried a 370 hp rating.
Not bad for 1970, and Pontiac may well have underrated that number for insurance purposes, but Detroit was still rating engines in gross hp states, rather than by the more more realistic ‘as-installed’ net hp system adopted in 1972. So you could probably knock at least 35 hp off that 370, which doesn’t sound like much when you’re comparing it with the Charger Scat Pack’s 485 horses.
The Judge is over 600 lbs (272 kg) lighter though, and it’s a manual, but the automatic Dodge has fat, modern rubber to deliver its power to the ground. Pushed to call it we’d put money on the Dodge.
So you can imagine that the Charger driver must have wondered whether Detroit had been sitting on its hands for the last 50 years when he launched at the lights, only to look across and see the creaky old GTO get a fractionally better start, and then peg him almost right to the finish. The Dodge does manage to take the win, but only just, with a time of 12.197. The GTO records a 12.223, meaning it loses by just 200ths of a second.
That’s even more impressive when you consider that according to the info with the video, the GTO races under rules that demand it is completely stock. But since period road tests of Ram Air IV GTO put similar cars running in the low 14s, we suspect this is one unusually healthy Judge.