Mostly Original - 1969 Dodge Charger R/T

Original owner stories are rare. Why? There is no rational reason to keep a car that long. They wear out. They get old. They feel old. Technology moves on, compromises become milder, driving comfort and convenience increase with each subsequent generation. Devotion and a rabid enthusiasm generally go hand-in-hand when it comes to old cars. Rarer still is the first and only owner of a serious muscle car, a nearly 40-year-old, well-maintained machine; so many were beaten up and broken back in the day that you just don't see them anymore.

What would you say about an original-owner car that isn't owned by a hardcore speed freak, but by a guy who just happens to really like his car? His garage isn't stuffed to the gills with memorabilia; the trophy room hasn't displaced any of his kids' bedrooms. He's just a guy who bought a bitchin' car to use as transportation in the great commuter wars on Southern California freeways, and who has held onto it all these years simply because there was no good and justifiable reason to unload it.

For Luis Gonzalez of West Covina, California, the decision process behind choosing a Charger R/T can be summed up in one word: Bullitt. "I saw the Charger in that movie and I thought, 'man, that's the car for me.' I saw the film in the summer of '68, and by the time I went looking for a car, the '69s were already out. There weren't a lot of leftovers, though, and the dealer told me I could have a new '69 for almost the same money as a '68. So I ordered one."

Gonzalez had enough of a taste for power and speed that he checked off the R/T package, which came with the 375hp 440 as the base engine. (Lots of people agreed with Gonzalez that the R/T was a pretty good deal: Of the more than 61,000 Chargers sold in 1969, fully 21 percent were the hot R/T model.) Selecting the cleverly named Dark Green paint and a vinyl top? Not tough choices: Both were high fashion when he was ticking away at the order blanks. And he ticked enough boxes to turn a $3,575 Charger R/T into a $4,837 Charger R/T, according to the Monroney sticker.

But then he made a couple of unexpected moves. Specifically, it's what's missing that's a little surprising. R/T tailstripes? You could surmise that they simply weren't reapplied after a recent repaint, but in truth the stripes were deleted at the factory. "I didn't like 'em," Gonzalez says simply. Fair enough.

And take a peek inside: The expected bucket seats and console that are part and parcel of an R/T Charger are MIA. Instead, there's a dark green bench seat and a chrome-levered column shifter. Gonzalez's R/T was going to be an automatic no matter what, but the bench seat? "I was still dating in those days," he recalled, with a warm smile in his voice. "I wanted to let my girlfriend get close." His girlfriend at the time became his wife a year and a half later, if that's any indication.

Muscle cars were often fated to do some hard time at the track, where young men went to test both mettle and metal against the clocks and against the guy in the other lane. But Gonzalez was never really interested in the scene. "I took it down once, just to see what it was all about. I smoked the tires halfway down the track. When I came back to the pits, a friend lent me his slicks. It went a little better, but by the time I'd gone down the track, I thought, 'OK, that's enough.' "

Clean trunk features the original spare tire and protective taillamp boxes

The vinyl top isn't original, but it was redone in 1975 with original factory top material. Seems Gonzalez was doing some home improvement work, and since this was his family's only car at the time, he drove home with planks of wood strapped to the roof. One wrong move in the driveway and he tore through the factory-applied black vinyl--though, to his credit, he got it repaired the right way.

Owner Luis Gonzales

All the while, Gonzalez raised his ever-expanding family: three little girls grew up in the back of that Charger. But after suffering the indignities of two separate oil crises and the price of gas shooting up well north of a dollar a gallon, and noticing that there weren't many cars like his on the roads anymore, Gonzalez put his Charger aside in the early '80s, still largely unblemished beyond parking lot dings and with 110,000 miles on the clock. It sat dormant through most of the '80s, and escaped both the first muscle car investment boom and several seasons of Dukes of Hazzard production untouched (West Covina is less than an hour from Hollywood).

Starting in the early '90s, though, Gonzalez discovered the wonderful world of cruise nights, and decided maybe he'd participate. And to do so in style, he decided, the ol' Charger would need a little refreshing. First came an engine rebuild--a purple-shaft cam, long-tube headers, a more free-flowing exhaust, a new radiator (quite visible in photos, Gonzalez admits, because he didn't know enough to retain the factory shroud to keep it looking stock), some refreshed suspension with new gas shocks, bigger wheels (15-inch chromed Magnum 500s) and tires (235/60s in front, 275/60s in rear), and then some paint and body work, flowing a new coat of Dark Green over the Charger's Coke-bottle flanks. (All of this work took place in bits and pieces over the better part of a decade.)

Mopar purists may recoil at the sight of a semi-gloss black engine compartment, but the simple truth is, the engine rebuild came before the paint--while in retrospect Gonzalez wishes it could have played out differently, it didn't. C'est la vie.

And we got to take it for a spin.

The olive green gut is just light enough that it feels more open than the dark, black vinyl shroud that generally envelops the cabin, and you with it, closing in around you with its claustrophobic clutches. At first, you can be forgiven for thinking you might be sitting in a lower-line Coronet: bench seat, column shift, no tach. Not terribly sporting, and at first blush not quite befitting something calling itself R/T. But then you can't have one hand on the wheel and the other around your lady when you're busy shifting; we can't help but admire this man who clearly had his priorities in line. The seat does its best to absorb you; ancient cushions and springs give way, as does admirably pliable four-decade-old vinyl. Inches of headroom are gained.

Turn the key, and the exhaust simply thunders, though if you strain you'll hear the sound of virtually every fuel-injected 5.0L Mustang ever owned by a teenager thanks to the aftermarket mufflers installed. Here, the traditional big-block Mopar rumble is given a curious new layer, higher up in the pitch range than you'd think 440 cubes could (or should) reach at idle. Whether it sounds right or wrong is not for us to say; we will say that it's not the sound that comes to your mind when you think big-block Mopar. Blip the throttle, and there's lots of noise to fill the cabin and scare the neighbor's cat.

Alas, it's not quite met with an accelerative force befitting the braying exhaust. There's no stumble off idle, no bad habits to indicate that it's out of tune. A mild power-brake at the light means you'll get going a little quicker, but still not as much as you'd think. Is it the 3.23:1 rear sopping the energy out of the driveline? Is it the extra power the 727 absorbs compared to a four-speed? Have all of the modifications somehow added more weight to this? Does your tester need to revert to diet beverages with lunch? Or have all of the modifications somehow conspired to make things less efficient and slow things down? Is it a combination? Tough to tell.

The tranny's shift action is entirely dependent on how you treat the throttle. Stomp on the pedal, and you can hold a gear clear through to what sounds like redline. Accelerate at, say, half-throttle, or even three-quarters, however, and the TorqueFlite will run through first and second and clunk into Drive the first chance it gets. Holding a gear is certainly a lot quicker around town (if not as fuel-efficient) than stomping the gas and awaiting kickdown would be. Shift action is consistently firm, but not violent, at all speeds, whether acceleration is moderate or a little faster going; as a result, it manages to feel a tad rough at around-town speeds while faster acceleration allows enough other sensory inputs that you don't notice it as much while at WOT.

The numb steering is a damned shame on a car that corners as flat as this particular Charger R/T does, even with its slight rake. It remains composed through the turns, though the steering--perfectly smooth whether operating with a single digit or two white-knuckle fists--offers Chrysler's usual power-assisted sensory-deprivation services, lest any untoward road feel make its way to the wheel. (The wheel also has a minor issue with trying to center itself that we've not encountered in other Mopars.) Surely the wide radials and the front anti-roll bar, nearly an inch thick, contribute mightily to this surprising and flat cornering attitude. We like it.

Power it through the turns, and marvel at just how tight this thing feels--a car that's had the suspension redone but hasn't been completely apart for a restoration, mind. Most of those bolts and all of those welds were installed in Highland Park in the fall of 1968, but the unit-body's remarkable solidity gives the impression of something much newer. Ride quality is good and controlled, allowing just the right amount of road feel to be transmitted into the cabin; as a bonus, there's no undue banging or clanking, as is sometimes the case with partly-rebuilt machines. If the steering could just be convinced to open up a little more and explain what was happening under the front tires, you could have a surprising weapon to shush through the bends and esses.

Gonzalez indicated that the "purple shaft" Mopar Performance cam took away all of the vacuum for his power brakes, and that he's added an electric pump to assist in the cessation of violence. "They told me vacuum would still be OK once I installed the cam," he mentioned as we drove. "It wasn't."

His solution works almost too well: the pump makes the brakes super-touchy even at speed, all too easy to lock up when you're not trying. At neighborhood speeds, it threatens to throw you through the windshield. After half an hour of not terribly ginger-footed in-town driving, accelerating away from stoplights and such, we cast a suddenly wary eye toward the temperature gauge. On that sweltering summer afternoon, the R/T's temperature never rose above 170 degrees--it never lost its cool.

So at the end of the day, our '69 Charger R/T is nearly original--and in some quite demonstrable ways, better. Whether the minor mods made here suit you (or me, for that matter) is beside the point. The owner? Completely original, and not about to change his mind or second-guess his choices. Nor should he.

Owner's View

"It never occurred to me to get rid of it, really. There was nothing wrong with it, so why should I? I was always able to garage it, even when I wasn't driving it, and now my youngest daughter has an interest in it. Plus, now I have grandsons, and they love it."--Luis Gonzales

Club Scene

Mopar Enthusiasts Car Club of America

moparenthusiasts.1afm.com

620-966-7974

Dues: free • (Web-based only)

PROS

+ Super-rare bench seat

+ Super-rare cornering

+ Super-rare original owner

CONS

- Bench seat in an R/T?

- Power steering: more like an Imperial

- Doesn't actually seem all that fast

Specifications

1969 Dodge Charger R/T

Price

Base price: $3,525

Price as profiled: $4,837

Engine

Type: OHV V-8, cast-iron "RB" block

Displacement: 440 cubic inches

Bore x stroke: 4.32 x 3.75 inches

Compression ratio: 10.1:1

Horsepower @ rpm: 375 @ 4,400

Torque @ rpm: 480-lbs.ft. @ 3,200

Valvetrain: Hydraulic valve lifters

Main bearings: 5

Fuel system: Single Holley 750cfm carburetor on Holley Street Dominator manifold, mechanical pump

Lubrication system: Pressure, gear-type pump

Electrical system: 12-volt

Exhaust system: Long-tube headers, mandrel-bent dual exhaust

Transmission

Type: Chrysler TorqueFlite three-speed automatic

Ratios 1st: 2.45:1

2nd: 1.45:1

3rd: 1.00:1

Reverse: 2.21:1

Differential

Type: Mopar 8¾-inch ring gear and housing with

Sure-Grip limited-slip differential

Ratio: 3.23:1

Steering

Type: Power-assisted recirculating ball

Turns, lock-to-lock: 5.3

Turning circle: 41 feet

Brakes

Type: Hydraulic, dual-circuit master cylinder, power assist

Front: 11-inch disc

Rear: 10-inch drum

Chassis & Body

Construction: Steel unit-body with subframes

Body style: Two-door hardtop

Layout: Front engine, rear-wheel drive

Suspension

Front: Independent; unequal length wishbones, torsion bars, tubular shock absorbers

Rear: Leaf springs (6 leaves left, 5½ right); tubular shock absorbers

Wheels & Tires

Wheels: Chromed steel Magnum 500

Front: 15 x 7 inches

Rear: 15 x 8 inches

Tires: BFGoodrich Radial TA

Front: 235/60R15

Rear: 275/60R15

Weights & Measures

Wheelbase: 117 inches

Overall length: 208.5 inches

Overall width: 76.6 inches

Overall height: 53 inches

Front track: 59.7 inches

Rear track: 59.2 inches

Curb weight: 3,900 pounds

Capacities

Crankcase: 5 quarts

Cooling system: 18 quarts

Fuel tank: 19 gallons

Transmission: 3.75 quarts (pan)

Rear axle: 3.75 pints

Calculated Data

Bhp per c.i.d.: 0.85

Weight per bhp: 10.4 pounds

Weight per c.i.d.: 8.86 pounds

Production

Dodge built 14,739 Charger R/T coupes for the 1969 model year.

Performance

Acceleration:

0-60 mph: 6.1 seconds

1/4 mile ET: 13.9 seconds @ 101.4 mph

Top speed: 130 mph (est.)