Rare ’68 Dodge Super Bee Hemi snags Best in Show at Musclepalooza XXII
Posted on Jul 6, 2020 in Featured | 2 comments
Joe Sokola with his 1968 Dodge Super Bee.
Call us suckers for factory stripped-down muscle cars, if you want. And Hemis. And four-speeds. And numbers-matching models. And rare combinations. And spectacular restorations to factory-correct standards. Add it all up, as was the case with Joe Sokola’s 1968 Dodge Super Bee, and you get our Best in Show winner for Musclepalooza XXII.
Joe, from Hartford, Connecticut, bought the car in 2011, when it was in pieces. Off the road from 1980, it “bounced around” to various owners, all likely well intentioned, but none actually motivated enough or financially ready (take your pick; it could be both) to put it back together. Joe had the restoration completed by 2013, but the rebuilt 426 Hemi V-8 was not running right, so that had to be done again. Now, all is right in Joe’s Hemi world.
Just 31 four-speed Hemi Super Bees came out of Dodge factories in 1968, marking this silver car a rare example. It is still equipped with its original engine, A-833 transmission and Sure-Grip Dana 3:54 rear-end. The driveline tells the story of a factory machine set up to conquer the quarter-mile.
Joe’s Super Bee, which also took home the hardware for our Favorite Dodge, was one of just over 400 show cars that graced the parking lot at Lebanon Valley Dragway for our semi-annual muscle car extravaganza. In addition to the show cars, nearly 200 other muscle machines competed on the strip in a variety of classes, including the popular F.A.S.T class (Factory Appearing Stock Tires) and bracket racers who were dialed in down to the eights!
A late summer, Labor Day weekend blast of hot, steamy weather did little to deter more the more than 2,000 muscle car fans who came out to West Lebanon, New York, on Sunday, September 6, for the big show.
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The future of the muscle car hobby is “street rod”. Meaning the cars will have modern Powertrain and suspensions. So you can actually use the cars in everyday situations. The argument that you can work on an old engine doesn’t help your cause. New cars don’t need daily attention. So its a plus that you need to adjust the carb weekly and replace points, and change plugs?
Yeah, you can ‘work’ on your contemporary engine now, just ask any tuner. Nostalgia is kinda hard to argue against. I remember fondly the days of constant fiddling with my car’s timing and carburation, but I wouldn’t do it on a regular basis today. That’s one of the reasons why the Mopars with the Hemi’s were typically not daily drivers, we preferred the 383’s and 440’s for their hydraulic lifters and general ease of operation. And I can guarandamntee you that if someone had offered the kind of ignition systems, fuel injection and engine management electronics that are available today we’d have all been selling our souls to get them.