14-YO Kid Paid $450 for First Car, a '68 Charger R/T 440; 45 Years Later, He Still Has It

First off, it’s a real muscle car with its matching numbers engine – the infamously fabulous Charger R/T that became an immortal silver screen icon in 1968, giving Steve McQueen’s Frank Bullitt the run of the millennium. Yes, this particular charger in our story isn’t black; it’s perhaps dressed in the only shade that makes a Charger even more 'up to no good' than the sinister dark livery. The Dukes of Hazzard’s Confederate Hemi Orange spells trouble all over the road.

And that’s precisely what the car did to its current owner of 45 years – it instigated him to do ‘Duke boys’ stuff. Alright, take out the interminable jumps, just leave the speed in, and that’s pretty much the whole deal. Except this happened when the man we see in the video remembering his teenage deeds was only 16 years old, fresh out of his driver’s license exam.

Let’s rewind the string of time two years before that moment and go from the beginning: the year is 1978, and the second generation Dodge Charger was a decade old. A bike-riding fourteen-year-old boy used to pass by a house, and he’d be seeing a familiar muscle car silhouette under a tarp. One day, he happens to catch the car’s owner out and asks him if the vehicle is a Charger.

There must have been something in the teen's voice that made the Dodge owner pass a monosyllabically affirmative answer because, instead, he took off the cover. ‘This is my car, kid.’ The Mopar bug bit harder than ever in the heart of the curious boy, and he shot the straightforward question any gearhead has on the tip of their tongue – ‘Is it for sale?’

When you’re 14, even going to the Moon isn’t beyond reach, so the owner played along. After the usual inquiry about the nosy visitor’s age, the Charger-man went straight to business. ‘How much money do you have?’ Now, in 1978, you don’t expect an awful lot from a kid with a bicycle as his most prized possession.

‘450 dollars, mister.’ The prospect of getting two birds with one stone must have been too tempting for the adult, so he honestly admitted the yellow car didn’t run (that was the Chrysler-applied hue this car was born with). ‘But if you want it, come back with your dad, and I’ll sell it to you for $450.’ That’s the end of the deal, but not of this story.

Chris Lehuede was the boy’s name, and he and his father pushed the Charger back to their house. Two years go by, and the mighty but fallen Dodge is brought back to life. Chris doesn’t say what was wrong with it – not that it would matter much – but he wrenched some magic into it and got the R/T back on the street.

It took him a solid two years’ worth of work, but in 1980, the resurrected Charger was rumbling down the roads. In fact, it was roaring, a tell-tale symptom of ‘speed ticket exposure.’ The reason is bluntly simple – the person behind the wheel was the restoring mechanic, Chris himself, now the proud owner of both a running, driving Charger, and a legal right to blast it on public roads.

‘Right’ didn’t equal ‘Dukes-of-Hazzard-intangible’ – something the young Lehuede discovered just half a year into his driving experience. With a stack of tickets in his name, he had to temporarily park the fast Charger and get a four-door Chevrolet Nova as his daily driver. I feel I don’t need to emphasize the heartdrop experienced by the overly enthusiastic 16-year-old.

After the tickets expired, he got back in it, and this time, he got himself into something far more enduring than a temporary ban from public roads. It’s called ‘marriage’ – Chris discloses that the first girl he took out on a date in the Charger was his wife, Pauline. She is his wife now; back in 1980, they hadn’t yet exchanged vows.

But Mr. Lehuede vows now that it is Pauline who will sell this car to its next owner because Chris will not part ways with it for as long as the good Lord of Mopar lets him breathe on this planet. And, looking through his Mopar muscle car collection, we can immediately tell this Charger is not going anywhere, not on his watch.

If you say to yourself, ‘This is a nice story,’ I invite you to read one. After he got the Charger back on the road, he decided to have it repainted – at that moment, this Hemi Orange Dodge was very much blue. In true gearhead fashion, he takes the car to a body shop and leaves it there for the livery refreshing.

After a while, seeing that the shop’s owner has fallen below the radar, he goes to check up on the ’68 – only to discover that the man who should have painted it ended up stealing it. Some two years later, driving to work, an 18-year-old Chris Lehuede spots his car – this car! – on the road. Pulls over, calls the police, and gets his car back home.

Some two decades ago, he had the car repainted and restored to its current condition – and there’s one reason it looks this good: Mr. Lehuede keeps all his Mopar gems in climate-controlled storage. And, although he has quite a selection of fine Mopars, he drives them all regularly – not excessively, but just enough to keep them in good shape.

For example, this splendid Charger has gained only around 15,000 miles (24,000 kilometers) on the clock since he bought it 45 years ago, with about 45,000 miles on it (72,000 metric clicks and some change). It may be a 55-year-old Dodge Charger, but it’s still an R/T.

As leader of the Scat Pack that took over American roads in 1968, the Charger R/T had two engine options – the standard 440-cubic-inch Magnum with a single four-barrel and the HEMI. Since our hero has the ‘440 Magnum’ call-outs on the air cleaner lid, we’ll say that it is one of 14,366 examples built with a three-speed TorqueFlite automatic (again, standard equipment for the Charger Road/Track).

With 375 hp (380 PS) and 480 lb-ft (651 Nm), the Magnum was second only to the powerhouse 426 HEMI in 1968 – but the elephant was a hard-to-tame ogre, so the 440 Raised-Block V8 was a much more reliable choice. To deal with the copious amount of horsepower and torque, all R/Ts got heavy-duty everything: brakes, rear leaf springs (with an extra leaf on the right side), brakes, torsion bars, sway bars, and shocks.

The revised Charger dropped the fastback looks of the first generation, and sales recoiled that stratospheric leap: nearly six times more Chargers were sold in 1968 (just over 96,000) than in the previous year (15,788). In ’68, the R/Ts alone – 17,582 strong – were outselling the model’s assembly numbers from just 12 months prior.