This 1968 Charger R/T 440 Four-Speed Got $40,000 in Speeding Tickets From 1976 to 1984

You know a good story is about to be unveiled when you hear this from the owner of a car: ‘I figure I've sent a cop to the academy with… with the money I've spent on traffic tickets.’ And we’re not talking about a twin-turbo rice steamer or some other annoyingly fast import, but the real-deal 440-4 Magnum four-on-the-floor kind of business. The kind that gave Frank Bullitt a run for his life.

The car we see in the video attached to this story last saw the road in 1984; now, I know that can mean ‘three and a half months ago’ for some gearheads who lived the good old days of muscle car glory, but that’s a full four decades ago. And it somehow survived with the original motor, transmission, and rear axle still inside the car.

Well, almost – the gearbox had to be rebuilt (the synchronizers were replaced), immediately pops the question: ‘What happened to them?’ $40,000 worth of speeding tickets from 1976 until 1984 is what can ruin a manual four-speed in a Dodge Charger R/T from 1968.

The owner of this car bought it in 1976 with $3,000 (loaned from his father, but that’s not the point) and quickly became good friends with the local Judge. Not the GTO, but the gavel-yielding man who convicted the speeding ‘Moparhead’ to fine after fine. During the eight-year-long felony-riddled record of the lead-footed driver, the magistrate got to know the serial speeder inside out.

However, His Honor served justice in the best way he deemed it and put a new twist on the phrase ‘time is money.’ In this case, its net worth is $40,000 or thereabouts. At one point, the piston-headed Mopar guy lost interest in the bookkeeping of his addiction’s side effects. Over eight years, that’s an average of five large a year, or about $418 (and change) monthly.

That’s got to be the most expensive 1968 Dodge Charger R/T in history, with a nominal bill of $43,000 (not accounting for inflation adjustment). ‘I think I did donuts in every single intersection in Temple City.’ That’s Temple City, California, where the car lived most of its life (the owner moved to Seattle, Washington, some five years ago). That’s not saying much, but when the hotheaded driver openly pleads ‘guilty as charged’ (pun intended) to the accusation of ‘painting the streets with rubber,’ we all know this muscle car lived its life to the fullest.

This Charger is one of the 17,584 Road/Track examples endowed with 440 cubic inches (7.2 liters) of High-Performance V8 (375 hp, 480 lb-ft / 380 PS, 651 Nm) from the factory. But the numbers take a steep nosedive when the transmission is added to the equation. Just 2,743 examples left the assembly line with a four-speed manual. The example depicted below has several other traits that make it a very rare ’68 Charger, like power windows, an 8-track, or the blue-on-blue combo.

The odometer next to the tic-toc-tach reads 87,791.4 miles (141,256.36 kilometers), and many of them were covered in 1,320-foot sections. The owner openly admits that the car did attend quarter-mile social piston gatherings. Still, its big four-barrel engine last ran in 2004. The current owner acquired the car from its original buyer; beyond that, we don’t know much more about the car’s history, except an accident that required the right rear quarter to be repainted. Its future, however, will be much more interesting than the last two decades of its life, as the YouTubers from Mopars5150 will probably restore it.