By John Gunnell
Diamante was called “World’s Most Valuable Hemi Car.”
One of the best-looking dream cars ever built made it to the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals (www.MCACN.com) in Rosemont, Ill., a couple of years ago. When it made its debut, this Pearl White “Diamante By Dodge” was displayed next to a half million dollars-worth of diamonds, because diamante means diamond in Spanish.
The Diamante story started in September 1969 when the first Dodge Challenger E-body car was made (there had been an earlier Dodge Challenger that was a full-size 1959 model option). In reality, the Diamante originated from the very first Challenger built, which was a triple black Hemi Challenger with just about every option you could pack on one car. Dodge turned it into a show car and then redid the show car into the Diamante.
Writing in Old Cars Weekly (June 18, 1989), Mopar expert Dave Duricy, Jr. said, “For 1970, Dodge Division displayed the last word in performance-look, pony-car styling . . . the Diamante.” From its jutting nose to its rear-mounted spoiler, it had everything in vogue at the time like slotted fender vents and air scoops on the leading edges of the rear fenders. The tires were fat and the interior sat only two people. The Diamante was a low, brutish looking machine, fully capable of the performance its overt look suggested.
As Duricy explained, the Diamante was based on a show car called the Yellow Jacket that was made from that black car that was first off the line. The Yellow Jacket was designed by Dodge engineers and built by Ron Mandrush of Synthetex, Inc. This dream car was Dodge’s big draw at the winter auto shows. The aerodynamically designed roadster was painted pearlescent Honey Gold and sported a long hood, a short rear deck and bucket seats. The car was also designed as a two-passenger job without a rear seat.
The Yellow Jacket had front and rear air spoilers and a shaker type hood scoop. It featured a removable roof and an integral roll bar. The rear window and the air spoiler could be raised or lowered through the use of controls built into the dashboard. The “pony”-sized dream car was still motivated by Mopar’s muscular 426-cid 425-hp Hemi V8.
Steve Juliano displayed the car with “1970 Challenger R/T” license plate on rear.
The Yellow Jacket had a unique air circulation system. Air vents on the rear deck lid were part of a flow-through ventilation setup. They allowed cool or warm air to be constantly circulated in the passenger compartment and exit through the rear deck vents.
Dodge saw the Yellow Jacket as a concept car designed to get buyer feedback on a potential Corvette-like sports car that Dodge was considering making. They wanted to survey potential buyers at the New York Auto Show and L.A. Auto Show. To attract attention to it, a scantily-dressed model encouraged showgoers to write and draw on her body with an ink marker. When she got more looks than the Yellow Jacket, Dodge decided to redo the car in Pearl White and promote it with the stash of pricey diamonds.
After the Yellow Jacket was converted into the Diamante, the bikini-clad model was no longer seen. But what wasn’t replaced was the Yellow Jacket’s 426-cid Hemi. Dream car collector Joe Bortz of Chicago, who owned the Diamante in 1989, told Dave Duricy that this dream machine was capable of doing 0 to 60 mph in 6.9 sec.
The Diamante also had a pistol-grip four-speed manual transmission and a Dana rear end with 4.10:1 gearing. It was equipped with a roll bar that was cleverly hidden inside the targa-style roof’s pillars. Under the car was a Dodge Charger suspension that was lowered three inches, so the 74-in. long external side-pipes exhaust system literally scraped the pavement. Dodge press releases said the Diamante had “road appearance.”
The interior of the show car had a lot more in common with a production-type Challenger than the exterior, except for the fact that it was made for two passengers. It featured leather seats, a centre console and a Dodge Challenger SE style steering wheel. A tonneau cover extended from behind the seats. Of course, unlike a stock Dodge Challenger, it had no rear seat. Also, inside was an AM/FM stereo system with an 8-track tape player. A motorized spoiler controlled by a switch on the left door sat on the car’s trunk. A nearly vertical powered rear window was also controlled by a driver’s door switch.
A tonneau turned the Diamante into a two-seater.
Dodge reportedly spent $250,000 turning the Yellow Jacket into the Diamante. After it spent a short time on the show circuit, the car got scratched while being shipped to a car show. George Busty of Creative Customs was hired to repaint the car. He hated white paint and no one bothered to tell him he should stick to the Pearl White colour. So, he squirted a Candied Tangerine Orange finish on the car and it went back on the show circuit in that hue until 1974. By then, a decision to drop the Challenger had been made.
Dodge put the Diamante in storage until 1978, when Chrysler’s business was hurting and it decided to auction the car off. The Diamante bounced around to a couple of owners, before Joe Bortz purchased it for his dream car collection. At one point, the author went to Bortz’s home north of Chicago and saw the car, which was stunning.
New Yorker Steve Juliano bought the car from Bortz in 1998. He was a big collector of Mopar models from the company’s “Rapid Transit System” era. After researching the Diamante’s history, he decided to have it restored in the original Pearl White colour. It was Juliano who brought the car to MCACN where he displayed it on a turntable. Juliano died from pancreatic cancer in 2018. We haven’t heard what happened to the Diamante since.
