When Dodge built the T/A 340—and what it’s worth now

The Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack is one of those rare muscle cars that really did start life on the racetrack and then make the jump to the street with most of its attitude intact. I want to walk through how and why Dodge built this short-run Trans Am special in 1970, what made the 340 Six-Pack package so different from a regular Challenger, and how collectors value these cars today.

Along the way, I’ll connect the racing rules that shaped the T/A, the engineering tricks that made it so quick, and the current market data that shows what you can expect to pay for a solid example now that these cars have become blue-chip Mopar collectibles.

How Trans Am racing forced Dodge to build the Challenger T/A

To understand why the Challenger T/A exists at all, I have to start with the rulebook rather than the showroom. The Sports Car Club of America limited Trans Am engines to 305 cubic inches, which meant any manufacturer that wanted to run at the front had to build a small-displacement V8 and then sell a road-going version to satisfy homologation rules. That’s why Dodge, which had been leaning on big-block power for its street image, suddenly needed a high-winding small-block for the new pony car.

Both Dodge and Plymouth were already involved in SCCA competition, and the Challenger T/A became the brand’s way to turn that racing push into a street weapon. Reporting on the program notes that Both Dodge and Plymouth had been active in SCCA events, and the Challenger T/A was built specifically so Dodge could go Trans Am racing with a car that looked like what customers could buy. Later retrospectives describe the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A Six Pack as a street-legal race car born from the Trans Am series, and that racing-first mindset is still what defines the car today.

Why the 340 Six-Pack was the heart of the T/A

Image Credit: Sicnag - CC BY 2.0/Wiki Commons — Image Credit: Sicnag – CC BY 2.0/Wiki Commons

On paper, the T/A’s engine was a 340-cubic-inch small-block, but the way Dodge configured it made the car feel far more serious than its displacement suggests. The 340 block was topped with a trio of two-barrel carburetors—the famous Six Pack setup—giving the engine a broad, explosive midrange that suited both road courses and stoplight sprints. Enthusiast write-ups on the car emphasize the “340” and “Six Pack” combination as the defining feature of the package, and they consistently refer to the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack as a purpose-built performance model rather than just another trim line.

Later coverage of the car’s history describes the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack as “The Trans Am Beast,” underscoring how central that small-block was to the car’s identity as Dodge’s answer to the pony-car wars. One detailed post on the model calls out the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack as a car created for one purpose—to dominate in Trans Am-inspired performance—highlighting the way the 340 and Six Pack combination turned the Challenger into a high-strung, track-ready street car.

Chassis, aero, and the “Muscle with a Purpose” setup

What makes the Challenger T/A so compelling to me is that Dodge didn’t stop at the engine bay; the whole car was reworked with racing in mind. The T/A received a fiberglass hood with functional scoops, hood pins, and side-exit exhaust that gave it a distinct look and a real aerodynamic and cooling advantage at speed. Contemporary descriptions of the package stress that the T/A wasn’t just about straight-line speed, and that the combination of lightweight body pieces and aggressive exhaust routing made it feel more like a race car that happened to wear plates.

One detailed breakdown of the model describes the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A as “Muscle with a Purpose,” noting that it was built for Trans Am competition but tuned to be “ready for the street” with features like the fiberglass hood, hood pins, and side-exit exhaust that helped it stand out in Mopar performance history. That blend of functional aero tweaks and visual drama is a big part of why collectors still single out the T/A from other 1970 Challengers.

How the T/A fit into Dodge’s broader muscle strategy

From a brand perspective, the Challenger T/A was Dodge’s way of proving it could do more than build big, heavy drag-strip bruisers. The car slotted into a lineup that already included high-horsepower Chargers and Coronet-based muscle, but the T/A gave Dodge a credible road-race contender that could be marketed alongside those straight-line heroes. In that sense, the T/A helped round out the Dodge performance story by showing that the company could play in the same small-block, high-revving sandbox as its rivals.

Enthusiast histories of the car point out that the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A Six Pack was part of a broader push by Mopar to leverage its racing programs for showroom traffic, with the T/A serving as the Trans Am counterpart to other competition-inspired models. One retrospective on the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six Pack frames the car as a key chapter in the Design and History of the Dodge Challenger within the Chrysler family, emphasizing how the Six Pack and T/A branding helped cement Dodge’s image among performance-minded buyers.

Production timing and the short-lived T/A experiment

Because the T/A was tied so closely to Trans Am rules, its production run was always going to be limited, and that scarcity is a big part of its appeal today. The car arrived as a 1970-only package, built specifically to satisfy SCCA requirements and capitalize on the buzz around the new pony car. Later coverage of the model’s backstory consistently treats the T/A as a one-year, homologation-style effort rather than a long-term trim level, which helps explain why surviving examples are so closely tracked by collectors.

Recent enthusiast discussions of the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six Pack continue to revisit that brief production window, with one detailed “Design and History” piece posted on Oct 2, 2024, highlighting how the T/A’s short run has only intensified interest in the car among Scatpack Nation and other Mopar-focused communities. Another enthusiast post from Nov 19, 2024, again underscores that the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack was created for a single purpose tied to that era’s Trans Am competition, reinforcing how tightly the car’s identity is bound to that one model year.

Driving character: from “Trans Am Beast” to street legend

On the road, the Challenger T/A’s personality reflects its racing roots more than its muscle-car badge. The combination of the 340 Six Pack, side-exit exhaust, and track-oriented suspension tuning gives the car a sharper, more urgent feel than many of its big-block contemporaries. Owners and historians alike tend to describe the car as raw but surprisingly agile, with the small-block’s willingness to rev making it feel more like a road-race machine than a boulevard cruiser.

Enthusiast write-ups that call the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack “The Trans Am Beast” capture that dual nature: it was Dodge’s answer to the pony-car wars, but it was also a car that demanded some commitment from the driver. One detailed overview of the 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A Six Pack emphasizes that it was Mopar’s street-legal race car, born from Trans Am competition, and that description lines up with how the car feels when driven hard: noisy, responsive, and happiest when it’s being pushed.

What a Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack is worth today

When I look at current market data, the Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack clearly sits in the upper tier of classic muscle values, but it hasn’t yet reached the stratosphere of the rarest Hemi cars. Valuation tools that track actual transactions indicate that a 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A in good condition with average specifications typically changes hands for around $73,500, which gives a realistic baseline for buyers and sellers. That figure reflects a car that’s presentable and mechanically sound, not a concours-level restoration or a heavily modified example.

The same valuation data notes that the highest sale price recorded for a Challenger T/A over the last three years reached well into six-figure territory, underscoring how originality, documentation, and color and option combinations can push values far beyond that typical number. For anyone shopping today, I’d treat that “Typically, you can expect to pay around $73,500” guidance for a 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A as a starting point, then adjust upward for documented low-mileage cars, rare colors, or exceptionally correct restorations, and downward for projects or heavily altered examples.

How to evaluate a T/A if you’re shopping now

If I were in the market for a Challenger T/A 340 Six-Pack today, I’d focus on authenticity first and cosmetics second. Because the T/A package included specific body, suspension, and engine components, verifying that a car is a genuine T/A rather than a clone is critical to justifying current market prices. That means checking for correct small-block hardware, Six Pack induction, and the unique T/A body details that separate these cars from standard 1970 Challengers.

Buyer-focused guides to the model stress how the SCCA’s While 305-cubic-inch rule shaped the car’s engineering, and that same rule of authenticity should shape a modern purchase decision. Cross-referencing the car’s VIN, fender tags, and drivetrain with known T/A specifications, and comparing them against detailed histories of the 1970 DODGE CHALLENGER T/A SIX PACK, can help you avoid paying top dollar for a car that doesn’t have the factory pedigree to back up its stripes and decals.