Muscle Car Digital Magazine

[Steve Holmes]

How cool is this! Thats Christophe Schwartz (pictured left) with his team and his mighty big block Hemi powered Dodge Charger stock car. As well as the Charger, Christophe also races a Hemi powered 1970 Plymouth Cuda, plus a Dodge Viper. You could say he is a bit of a Mopar nut!

Christophe lives in Germany, but was born in France. Having the interest he does in motorsport history, of course, the Le Mans 24 Hour race is something very important to him, and it was while researching NASCAR stock cars that raced at Le Mans that he first discovered the Olympia Beer sponsored Dodge Charger raced in the 1976 event, by Hershel and Doug McGriff.

That discovery sparked a fascination with this effort, which eventually brought about the creation of this tribute car. Christophe began researching the 1976 Olympia Charger, and this brought him into contact with one of the team members from that program, Dick Pierson. It was Dick who found an original Dodge Charger USAC car for which Christophe began the monumental task to enter the 2006 Classic Le Mans 24 Hour event.

Classic Le Mans is held every two years, and while it takes place over 24 hours, its broken up into several different categories, based on vehicle age. Each group races for 1 hour, then stops while the next group races, rotating through each cycle. So while no car actually races for 24 hours, all going well, each should get in several hours of racing, in both daylight and at night.

Christophe and his team achieved their goal and made that 2006 event, marking 30 years since the original Olympia Charger raced at Le Mans. They've since returned for each subsequent event, and have had a great time doing so.

We'll bring you the full story on both the original Olympia Charger, and Christophe's awesome tribute car in Issue 2 of Muscle Car Digital Magazine.