“Black Ghost” 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T-SE Four-Speed Hemi Survivor Finds New Home

As lot number F142—a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T-SE Hemi four-speed—glided across the Mecum auction block in Indianapolis on Friday, May 26, 2023, Gregory Qualls and his family looked on pensively. The car that had occupied a central role in the Qualls family since the death of Gregory’s father, Godfrey, on Christmas day 2015 was finally going to change hands. The car is the rarest of the rare—an all-original Chrysler E-Body Hemi car built at the peak of the muscle car era, with all the options, including the aforementioned Hemi, a four-speed stick shift, and a black gator-grained vinyl top. Only one 1970 Dodge Challenger was ever built like this, and this one emerged nearly unscathed as a survivor from a long underground sleep since disappearing from the Detroit-area street-racing scene in 1976.

The “Black Ghost,” as it’s become known, has earned its name ironically not for its ghostly 40-year slumber right under the Qualls family’s collective nose, but for its penchant in the early 1970s for arriving at street racing locations in the Detroit area, vanquishing all competition, then disappearing anonymously like a ghost before the driver’s identity was known. One thing was certain though: the driver was Black, because the car was adorned with the red, black, and green crest of the Zulu Warrior nation, a potent and polarizing symbol in a city that had suffered through one of the country’s most destructive and violent race riots just three years prior to the car’s assembly. Godfrey Qualls, the car’s original owner—a decorated Vietnam war veteran and longtime Detroit Metro motorcycle cop—would only divulge the Hemi Challenger’s existence to his son Gregory on his deathbed, thus triggering the second intriguing chapter in the Hemi car’s life.

That second chapter of the Black Ghost came to an end as Gregory Qualls Jr., Godfrey’s grandson, dropped the hammer at Mecum Indy. The seven-and-a-half years since Godfrey told son Gregory about the Black Ghost from his hospital bed have been highly eventful for the Qualls family. After uncovering the car at Godfrey’s home in early 2016, it has been on a whirlwind tour, checking all the appropriate boxes for an epic car like this, including the Detroit Autorama, Chryslers at Carlisle, Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge, and the granddaddy of them all, the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago. In that time, the Black Ghost took a short detour to be inducted into the Library of Congress as one of the most influential cars in American history, a feat that only a handful of other cars have ever managed. On top of that, Dodge has issued a series of 300 commemorative “Black Ghost” 2023 Dodge SRT Challengers, many of which have commanded a premium price of as much as $100,000 over the car’s $100,910 sticker price—and that’s for a modern-day copy of the original. In the end, it’s testimony to the Black Ghost’s importance and its final transaction price of $1,072,500, including bid price and all fees.

At the end of the day, it was Ryan Snyder, a 44-year-old real estate attorney from Bradenton, Florida, who came through with the top bid, at a hammer price of $975,000. The decision to bid on the Black Ghost, however, wasn’t a foregone conclusion. “I was in Indianapolis chasing my bucket-list, Holy-Grail car, which was a ’69 ZL1 Camaro. My first love is first-gen Camaros and my second love is any other muscle car out there. I’m not just a Chevy guy or a Ford guy or a Mopar guy. I love them all. They had a good one that was there that was one of the original 50 [Fred] Gibb cars. I’m a Camaro nut, and that is why I was at Indianapolis,” says Snyder.

But bidding on the rare aluminum-big-block 427 Chevy, which he had planned for the day after the Black Ghost’s auction, never happened. “The car has been on my radar for the past six months,” says Snyder about the Black Ghost, a car he had read about at HOT ROD. “There’s no other way to say this, but obviously it’s a ton of money for a car—you’re not gonna get any argument out of me from that. I never in a million years thought I’d ever be in a position spending this kind of money on a car, but to go back a little bit, when I first really started looking into this car I thought to myself, there is no way this thing is gonna go for less than $2 million. Just because of the history of the car, with the way the Mopar faithful are, I really thought that one of the big Mopar collectors would step up.” It was the perfect storm: a true survivor black-on-black Hemi four-speed car with almost every option, including the rare gator-grained top, impeccable one-family provenance, inclusion in the Library of Congress, and an incredible true urban legend associated with it.

On the other side of the bidding was the consignor, Gregory Qualls, the son of the original owner, Godfrey Qualls. Gregory recalls the auction as it unfolded: “It was exciting, it was intense, and it was bittersweet all at the same time. I was embracing family at the time when it first began. I was looking to see how much time they had and it was running out of time. It didn’t go as fast as we expected—you know how auctions are. It is what it is, right? It’s whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. It wasn’t a relief, it wasn’t sad or happy, it went for $975 [thousand], so I didn’t know really what to expect. I never had any car at an auction ever.” If you’re wondering what Gregory plans to do with the proceeds, Qualls volunteered that priority one was to get his hands on one of the 300 limited-edition Dodge Black Ghost Last Call special-editions that commemorate his dad, Godfrey, adding that eventually his own son, Gregory Junior, would end up with the keys.

Like Gregory Qualls, Ryan Snyder also realized after a short time that the expected bidding frenzy wasn’t going to materialize. That’s when he stepped in and stepped on the gas. Snyder revealed to us his thoughts on the car, its history, and on the man who drove it: “Back in that time, especially with what had happened in Detroit right before this car was manufactured, it was a tumultuous time. It says a lot that this guy was at the forefront. This story has been personalized for Mr. Qualls. The story itself is representative of what played out in every town in this country back during this time. Take Mr. Qualls name out of the story and just leave it a blank and you could put in a hundred thousand different names. It’s just representative of what we were and what it was back then. But more so too, I would think that during this period of time in his community [Godfrey] probably had one of the nicest, strongest cars back then and he probably was revered, and we should celebrate that.”

A few potential bidders preferred to steer clear of the Black Ghost, its identifying day-two “Africa” fender decals unwittingly playing a spoiler role for short-sighted individuals who are at the very least bad at math, but Ryan Snyder has fully embraced the car’s undisputed lineage, its true value, and the Qualls family with it. “When I met Ryan, he was a very nice guy,” says Gregory Qualls. “Very enthusiastic. Very professional. He basically wants me to be a part of the story with the car, which shocked me, and I was just kind of surprised about that, because I just expected that the person who would buy the car was just going to lock it up. He told me that he wanted to share it with the world and he wanted to get this out in the forefront. He said, ‘Before I do anything with the car, I’ll call you. I want your blessings with it.’ That really shocked me. That was very amazing for me because I never experienced anything like that.”

We can debate whether the Black Ghost should’ve hammered for more, but as Qualls stoically told us, it is what it is. What we can say for sure is that spines are on sale at Amazon, and a few trolls on brand-specific message boards could use one. Snyder, however, was a bit more charitable in his observation: “In a lot of the research I do, I go to a lot of the forums. I look at what a lot of the old-timers are posting about the cars, and they have a lot of conversations about the car. And the conversations that they were having about this car are frankly not like any of the other conversations I’ve seen before. As I was telling my family before the auction of the car, ‘There’s a chance this car is not going to go anywhere near what I think it’s going to sell for.’ I can tell you within the first 15 or 20 seconds of bidding on the car, I knew it was going to come down to me and maybe one other bidder. Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed at the auction, and what I was afraid would happen in fact did happen. It was obviously a good thing for myself but I think this car should’ve sold for a lot more.”

In the end, a highly anticipated and widely known auction for a car like the Black Ghost will expose its true value, weighing all factors such as how deep the pool of bidders is and which aspects of a car are most highly prized. We want to also point out that, irrespective of internet chatter, the color of money remains the same: green. It’s unlikely that on any given day those internet hecklers have more than a couple of dimes to collectively rub together, so have hurtful opinions mattered to the outcome? The answer, of course, is no. Restored 1970 Hemi four-speed R/T-SEs in perfect condition have hammered recently in the low-six-figure range, and some rare survivor Hemi cars have gone for significantly less, depending on condition. On the other hand, you have the absolutely absurd valuations of Hemi E-Body convertibles fetching multiple millions of dollars, lending credence to arguments on both sides—a sign that the auction hammer price was about right. The perception that the Black Ghost hammer price was on the low side could be tested soon, but until then, our take is the same as Gregory’s: it is what it is.

Gregory Qualls and his family have enjoyed taking the Black Ghost on the road these past seven years, and he had these last words to say: “I want to thank all the people that supported me and the Black Ghost. I want to give thanks to Ryan for being such a cool guy, and I know that he will do his best with the car and I wish him the best of luck with that. I know it is in very good hands with him and I’m very happy about that. Yeah, I’ll go visit it. He left that invitation for me whenever I want to go see it. That’s kind of cool. I know he’s doing some minor things to it, it’s nothing super major, which is pretty interesting I thought. We’ll see what happens.” Snyder has stated that his plans eventually call for the car to be placed in a museum where others may see it, but not before it is thoroughly detailed. The plan is to preserve its survivor status while going completely through the running gear. With any luck, we’ll soon be bringing you the third chapter in the Black Ghost’s story!