Two years after the Black Ghost joined the National Register of Historic Vehicles, the son of the street-racing, Hemi-powered 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T’s original owner has decided to put it up for auction, consigning it to Mecum’s Indianapolis sale.
Godfrey Qualls, a Detroit native who had spent time in the Army during Vietnam, had just entered the police academy when he decided to order the Challenger. The impetus behind the decision came not from his chosen career but from his brother Cleolous, who had bought a black 1968 Dodge Charger for organized drag racing—the kind that takes place on a drag strip in clear view of anybody and everybody. According to Gregory and his uncles, Godfrey had urged Cleolous to order the Charger with a Hemi, but when Cleolous instead chose the less expensive 440-cu.in. V-8. That galvanized Godfrey to buy a Hemi of his own and to prove it in unorganized street racing—the kind that takes place under the cover of darkness far from the purview of authorities.
Built to Race
Qualls ordered the Challenger from Raynal Brothers Dodge on Chalmers Avenue in Detroit in black with a white stripe, similar to his brother’s Charger, and with the Hemi that he had his heart set on. Along with a four-speed manual transmission, he also ordered the A34 Super Track Pack with 4.10 gears, J45 hood pins, S83 Rim-Blow steering wheel, R35 multiplex AM/FM stereo, V1G Gator Grain vinyl roof, and a host of other options that added up to a total cost of nearly $5,300. He also specified a Shaker hood, which didn’t come with the car when it arrived. According to Gregory’s uncles, Godfrey threatened to sue either the dealer or Chrysler; he eventually got the hood assembly, but then never had it installed. The only race prep he deemed necessary consisted of an aftermarket coil, 11-inch slicks, and unhooked mufflers.
Sometime after ordering the car, Qualls graduated from the academy and joined the Detroit Police Department, assigned to traffic enforcement in the department’s 11th Precinct. By day he rode a motorcycle, writing speeding tickets. Then, by night, he’d back the Challenger out of his garage on the East Side and prowl the streets for the next race.
“I’m pretty sure he’d have lost his job if his superiors found out,” Gregory says. “They wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
How It Earned the Name Black Ghost
He was careful. He took few chances at getting caught. He didn’t tell anybody his name, didn’t hang out with the racing crowd, and only appeared for the occasional race. The Challenger thus became a sort of urban legend among the Detroit street racing crowd, a car that would show up on Telegraph or Woodward or Stecker Street to dominate, then disappear for months at a time. “That’s what made it so mysterious,” Gregory says. “Everybody apparently called it the Black Ghost.”
Qualls took care of the car, too. He racked up more than 45,000 miles on it but it still has the original Hemi and it reportedly never needed a clutch. After its street racing glory days, he socked it away in the garage, covered with blankets and NOS parts that he accumulated with a full restoration in mind. He’d beat cancer once before, but it came back in 2015. Before he died on Christmas Eve of that year, he had Gregory bring a thick envelope full of papers to his hospital bed. Godfrey pulled out the title and handed it over to his son.
“He said he wanted me to have the car, just not to get rid of it,” Gregory says. “He just smiled, and that was the last time I saw him happy.”
Gregory Qualls had gone for a ride in the car here and there as a youngster and talked about restoring it with his dad, but he’d never driven it. He took the Challenger home and, with the help of a few friends, went through the car to determine what it would need. “Everything looked pretty decent, not corroded like we expected it to be,” he says. Still, they had to change all the fluids; replace the belts and hoses; swap out the Tiger Paws that were on it for a set of reproduction F60-15 Polyglas GTs; rebuild the brake booster and carburetors; and install a new radiator, clutch fan, and master cylinder. “We didn’t want to take any chances—we wanted to make it safe and drivable.”
Into the Daylight
Since then, he unveiled the Black Ghost at the 2017 Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, then took it to the 2018 Chrysler Nationals at Carlisle, where it won the Historic Vehicle Association’s National Automotive Heritage Award and where he met the HVA’s Casey Maxon, who later nominated the Challenger for a spot on the National Historic Vehicle Register. He also displayed the Black Ghost at Amelia Island and met Ralph Gilles, who advocated for the car to serve as the model for one of Dodge’s Last Call cars—a series of seven Charger and Challengers meant to send off the Hemi-powered rear-wheel-drive muscle car platform and to pay homage to Mopar history.
The Black Ghost Last Call Challenger features a Hellcat Hemi V-8 along with black paint (set off by a white bumblebee stripe) and a simulated Gator Grain roof graphic. It’s one of two Last Call cars—alongside the King Daytona inspired by Big Willie Robinson’s Charger Daytonas—meant to recall Black racers in Mopar history.
As Gilles told Hemmings late last year, the decision to pay tribute to Qualls and Robinson—which he made with Tom Sacoman, the director of Dodge Product and Motorsports—resulted from “the shortest conversation ever: ‘Yes, of course we will do this.’ There wasn’t any hesitation.”
“We auto enthusiasts don’t talk about diversity enough,” Gilles says. “We didn’t set out to solve any problems with these cars […] we want to shed a light on the diversity in our history and open the doors to that conversation.”
Gilles at the time said the car was a million-dollar car. While Mecum has released no pre-auction estimates for the Black Ghost, Mecum Vice President of Consignments Frank Mecum said the car’s value “is well into seven figures.” Hemi-powered 1970 Dodge Challenger convertibles have crossed the million-dollar threshold at auction before (a Plum Crazy example sold for $1.43 million in 2019 while a Sublime example sold for $1.65 million in 2016), but it appears no hardtop Challenger has done so.
The Black Ghost will cross the block as part of Mecum’s Indianapolis auction, which will take place May 12-20 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. For more information, visit mecum.com.