Though I'm a fan of stacked-headlamp designs, this one almost seems to want to hide their vertical orientation among a sea of wide horizontal cues. As 71ChargerR/T mentioned, the later cars were a much better design.
As far as TheNodularKnockwurst's thoughts, I totally get what you're saying but as badly as I wanted to hang onto my first Challenger the logisitics involved at the time were impossible. The car needed the entire front suspension rebuilt, itself beyond my means in '88, but more importantly there were no reproduction panels yet being made other than very-crappy quarter skins. Everything behind the rear axle kickup was either shot or just plain gone; opening the trunk allowed one to not only view one's own footwear, but half the fuel tank and both rear tires. There was literally no frame rail on the LH side after the kickup. I'd simply wedged the car's bumper jack into the remains of the kickup, and the other end used the jacking mechanism itself as a "load spreader" against the back bumper and taillamp panel. I drove it like that until the day I sold it, often at speeds over 120MPH--I buried the 7K tach in fourth gear the day I sold it, in fact. The bumper was so tilted the LH taillamp was just visible enough as to not get me pulled over. It was a deathtrap I happened to survive and I was the last one to drive it.
I loved that car dearly but it just wasn't in the cards to keep it. Beyond the difficulties outlined above, my parents didn't understand the car fetish at all, and we lived in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. Storing the car until the technology and parts to revive it came along wasn't even a possibility. So even though I already had the car back in the '80s, there was simply no way I could keep the car then. Too many cards stacked against me.
When E-body prices truly went berserk, I just gave up on the idea of ever owning another one and switched my allegiances to '71/'72 Chargers. I knew that if I ever got another Challenger, it would be a '72-'74 car and I'd sort of finish what I started back in '88--but none of that seemed possible for a very long time. Thanks to v8440, it's happening now, though admittedly very slowly. A lot of what I wanted back then (spoilers, Six Pack, flip-top fuel filler) no longer appeal to me, but I still plan to make it close enough to what I had to make some people think they're seeing a ghost.
As far as my V-code '71 Super Bee, believe me: There's no joy in owning a 1-of-1 project car. You almost have to restore it, and do it right, and once you do you'll forever be paranoid about wrecking it. I'd have been too terrified to drive it. Cars like that are for collectors or museums and I want no part of just saying "I own one" without being able to enjoy it eventually. Had they made even 25 of 'em it might still rank as a dream car for me, but its rarity means I'm totally OK with it being someone else's dream. Dumping $50K+ into a NOM museum piece carries no appeal for me.
