BOLD RIDE
Dodge’s Charger Daytona and its cousin the one-year only Plymouth Road Runner Superbird are two of the most memorable and instantly recognizable American performance cars of their day. Designed for victory on NASCAR’s high speed ovals, they weren’t all that popular among onroad customers because of their pretty extreme looks. Now, though, they are extremely collectible.
Of the Dodge and the Plymouth versions, the Dodge is significantly rarer. Around 2,000 Superbirds were built compared to only 503 Charger Daytonas. NASCAR required that 500 production examples of a car had to be built for it to race, and Dodge went for the minimum.
Of those 503 that were built, a precious 70 had Chrysler’s legendary 426 Hemi under the hood. The rest had to make due with the Magnum 440, a perfectly competent but less potent motor. And of those 70 Hemi cars, just 20 were equipped with a 4-speed manual in place of an automatic.
This 1969 car, finished in the appropriately eye-catching color of Copper Metallic, is one of those 20. Even better, it supposedly has just 6,400 actual miles and wears an older restoration with most of its original stuff still intact.
Mecum is selling 3,000 cars in Kissimmee, Florida this month, so it’s naturally pretty hard for a car to stand out. This Charger Daytona, though, has everything going for it. It’s probably one of the best examples to have, and it has the ideal combination of equipment.
Prices for these cars peaked then dipped pretty hard back in 2007, and today the market is around $300,000-$400,000. With enough bidders clamoring for it in Kissimmee this year, however, Mecum’s pre-sale estimate of $800,000-$1,000,000 for the 1969 Dodge Hemi Daytona shouldn’t be too hard to meet.
No comments:
Post a Comment