1969 Dodge Charger With Rare Option Combo Springs Back to Life After 22 Years

What makes this combo so desirable? Well, it's a mix of high-performance and luxurious features. The R/T bundle included a set of goodies that turned the Charger and Challenger into a segment-leading muscle car. It combined a beefed-up big-block V8 engine with heavy-duty suspension, performance tires and brakes, and race-inspired stripes.

The Special Edition (SE) package added premium appointments such as genuine leather and vinyl bucket seats, wood-grain inserts on the dashboard, a unique steering wheel, and pedals with dress-up moldings. Exterior upgrades included hood-mounted turn signals, deep-dish wheel covers, and "SE" badges on the C-pillars.

In short, Dodge created the R/T package for customers looking for a fully-fledged muscle car. At the same time, the SE bundle was aimed at buyers needing a sporty but also fancy rig. Those who combined the badges got a nicely appointed cruiser that was ready to smoke the competition at the drag strip any day of the week.

While the R/T and the SE bundles aren't particularly rare on their own, cars equipped with both are hard to find nowadays. Take the 1970 Dodge Challenger, for instance. Of the 76,935 examples produced that year, only 3,753 left the assembly line with the R/T SE combo. By contrast, Dodge produced almost 15,000 R/Ts and more than 6,000 SE models. The HEMI is the rarest of them all, with just 60 made, while the 383 was the most popular, with 2,522 units made.

But the Challenger wasn't the first Dodge that got the R/T and SE bundles. The larger Charger became available with both in 1969. This was the nameplate's best-selling year, with 104,978 examples delivered. No fewer than 20,057 of these vehicles were optioned with the R/T package.

How many of them also got the SE bundle? Well, the latter was a dealer-installed option that year, and Dodge didn't keep track, but most Charger experts agree that fewer than 4,500 cars were equipped with the R/T SE combo.

Granted, the 1969 Charger R/T SE is not quite as rare as the 1970 Challenger with the same packages, but they're not as common as the production numbers suggest either. That's because many of them were abandoned in junkyards or parked in barns after a few years on the road. And while you can still track down rust buckets needing six-figure restorations, unmolested examples are so rare that many of us will never see one in the metal. The Dark Green hardtop you see here is one of those cars.

Rescued by YouTube's "HHWheels," this rare Charger is also one of those classics that was neglected for decades. The story goes that the original owner passed away while in the army, and the Mopar ended up sitting under a tarp for about 22 years. Sadly, the car was parked outside, and the cover did not prevent rust from getting to the body, so the R/T SE was in poor shape when it was rescued.

But even though most body panels show signs of rust here and there, the chassis is still solid. And that's surprising, given that cars parked outside tend to rust from the bottom. The interior was still in good shape, while the odometer showed only 46,000 miles. Moreover, the Charger still had the original 383-cubic-inch (6.3-liter) V8 under the hood.

Sure, 383 cars are nowhere near as rare as the HEMIs and the 440s, but Dodge's entry-level big-block was still plenty powerful when new at 335 horsepower. But the best news about it is that the lump came back to life with just a bit of work. Not only that, but our hosts also managed to drive it for 1,500 miles without issues during the Hot Rod Power Tour 2023.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a restoration process that will see this Charger return to factory specs. Until that happens, see it coming back to life in the video below.