Charger (Second generation)

The 1968 Restyle The first-generation Charger, a fastback conversion of the Coronet, sold poorly. For 1968 Dodge started again with a genuinely new upper body over the B-body platform: a horizontal Coke-bottle silhouette with pronounced bulges over both wheel arches, a recessed grille with hidden headlights, a tunnelled backlight framed by flying-buttress sail panels, a flip-top fuel filler and scalloped door surfaces. Chrysler cites a 343 percent sales increase over the 1967 car. Two models were offered at launch, the base Charger and the R/T; a 225 slant-six was added mid-year beneath the 318 and 383 V-8s. The R/T carried the 440 Magnum as standard, with the 426 Street Hemi at roughly $605 the only step above it.

Aerodynamics and the Charger 500 The tunnelled rear window and recessed grille that made the 1968 car look the way it does also made it slow on a superspeedway, and Ford's Fairlane Torino comprehensively beat Dodge in 1968. Chrysler's answer for 1969 was the Charger 500: Creative Industries filled in the backlight with new sheet metal and flat glass, replaced the recessed grille with a flush stamped Coronet unit carrying exposed headlights, and fitted a small A-pillar fairing to reduce turbulence. Testing reportedly showed a gain of three to seven miles per hour. NASCAR's homologation rule of the period called for 500 street cars; how many Dodge actually built is one of the more contested figures in American car history.

The Daytona and the 200 mph Lap The Charger 500 was not enough. For the second half of 1969 Dodge produced the Charger Daytona, adding a long pointed nose cone in place of the grille and a rear stabiliser wing roughly 23 inches above the deck lid. Approximately 503 street cars were built, about 70 with the 426 Hemi and the rest with the 440 Magnum, and production stopped as soon as the homologation count was satisfied. Richard Brickhouse won the inaugural Talladega 500 in a Daytona on 14 September 1969, in a race depleted by a drivers' boycott over tyre safety. On 24 March 1970 Buddy Baker lapped Talladega at 200.45 mph in a Daytona, the first 200 mph closed-course lap in NASCAR, a record that stood until 1983. NASCAR then legislated the winged cars out by restricting them to roughly 305 cubic inches, and the aero era ended after two seasons.

1970 and the End of the Body Style For 1970 the split grille of 1969 gave way to a single opening inside a chrome bumper that looped fully around the front, tail lamps became plain full-width rectangles, R/T cars gained a flat reverse-facing door scoop with an R/T medallion, and the wraparound tail stripe was dropped. The 440 Six Pack joined the options list at 390 gross horsepower for about $119 over the standard R/T 440, and Dodge offered the High Impact colours - Plum Crazy, Panther Pink, Go Mango. Sales fell sharply, in part because the new Challenger now took the buyer who wanted a Dodge two-door with a big engine, and the third-generation Charger of 1971 was a different and softer car.

Screen Fame No other American car of the period has been filmed as often. A black 1968 R/T is the pursued car in Bullitt; a 1969 became the General Lee in The Dukes of Hazzard, which by Hagerty's account consumed somewhere between 250 and 350 real Chargers between 1979 and 1985, with fewer than 20 documented show cars believed to survive; a black 1970 is Dominic Toretto's car in The Fast and the Furious. The practical consequences are twofold. Screen exposure created and sustains a very broad demand base for the shape irrespective of drivetrain, and the Dukes production consumed a meaningful number of donor cars during the years when they were cheap.

Corrosion is the dominant issue and it follows a known pattern: trunk floor and floor pans first, which Hagerty describes as notorious even on cars that look almost rust-free; then bubbling around the hood hinges, which normally indicates worse corrosion hidden behind it; then the rear quarter panels, which are also where previous owners' amateur repairs concentrate. The causes are structural rather than incidental - windshield seals leaked, particularly on 1968 cars, and the rubber trunk mats trapped water underneath. Mechanically the cars are straightforward: the engines, transmissions and running gear are simple and have few systemic weak points. The notable exception is the vacuum reservoir canister that operates the hidden headlight doors, whose seals fail with age, though replacement parts are now more available than they were. Drum brakes all round are adequate for the period and inadequate for modern traffic, which is why the optional front discs are worth seeking out. On the restoration side, Hagerty's guide is explicit that a 383 or 440 car will usually cost more to restore than it will be worth afterwards; only genuine Hemi and Six Pack cars reliably repay a full restoration.

Read the car's identity before you read anything else. The VIN plate sits on the left side of the instrument panel and runs 13 characters: position 1 is the car line, position 2 the price class (S denotes the R/T, X the 1969 Charger 500 and Daytona, P the standard/premium car), positions 3-4 the body style (29 for the Charger hardtop), position 5 the engine code - J is the 426 Hemi, L the 440 four-barrel, V the 1970 440 Six Pack - position 6 the model year (8, 9, 0), position 7 the assembly plant (A Lynch Road, B Hamtramck, E Los Angeles, G St. Louis), and positions 8-13 the sequence number. Position 5 is the single character that separates a Hemi car from a Hemi clone, and it cannot be argued with. Then find the fender tag, riveted to the inner fender, usually on the driver's side; it is read left to right and bottom to top and records paint, trim, axle ratio, transmission, build date and the engine code. There is a trap specific to 1968: the 1968 fender tag carries the Vehicle Order Number rather than the VIN, and the 1968 body stampings on the radiator cradle and trunk lip carry that VON too, so a 1968 tag cannot be matched directly to the VIN the way a 1969 or 1970 tag can. Look also for the build sheet, commonly wedged under or behind the rear seat, and for the engine and transmission stampings - passenger side of the block at frost-plug level, near the distributor, and on the transmission case. Because reproduction fender tags exist and the value gap is enormous, any car being sold as a Hemi or a Daytona should carry third-party documentation; RM Sotheby's catalogue material for a 1968 J-code car cites inspection reports from recognised Mopar authenticators including Galen Govier and David Wise, which is the standard the market expects. On the Daytona and Charger 500 specifically, verify the XX body code and the conversion details rather than the wing itself, since nose-and-wing conversions of ordinary Chargers are common. Beyond identity: check the trunk floor and floor pans, look for bubbling around the hood hinges, and examine the rear quarter panels closely for amateur repair. Confirm whether front discs are fitted. Hagerty's guide notes a market nuance worth understanding - a date-correct replacement block in a car with the right colour and option combination can bring close to numbers-matching money, so colour, engine type and options often outweigh the original block itself.

As of late August 2026, classic.com puts the second-generation Charger market benchmark at roughly $150,500 across all variants, a figure pulled upward by the aero cars. The useful numbers are the sub-segments: standard variants benchmark at approximately $79,100 and R/T models at approximately $103,500, with 59 cars listed for sale and recent results running from about $33,000 for a 1968 sold in September 2025 to $1,395,000 for a Daytona. The Daytona is a separate market: classic.com's benchmark is approximately $529,800 overall, approximately $357,000 for 440 cars and approximately $1,794,300 for the 426 Hemi cars. A genuinely unrestored 440 Daytona with 3,693 miles sold for $605,000 at Richmond Auctions in November 2025. Hagerty's guide describes a good-condition small-block 1968 at around $22,000 and a concours 1970 R/T Hemi at around $250,000. Premiums attach to the Hemi first, then the 1970-only 440 Six Pack, then the four-speed manual; High Impact colours and white interiors add materially, and the SE package and factory sunroof are rare enough to matter. The gap between a 383 car and a documented Hemi R/T is roughly an order of magnitude, which is what makes documentation the whole transaction.