The Unloved

Nobody Wanted This ’69 Daytona, Not Even the Dealer. Somehow, It Survived in the Hands of a Fun-loving Family.

- Brian Lohnes

Legions of cool muscle cars have been saved from the crusher, dragged from barns, pulled from muddy fields, and otherwise saved from an ignominious fate of wanton neglect. Paul Prescott’s 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona is the first car we have ever heard of being saved from the very dealership lot that it was sitting on. See, this car was a victim of its own time and nearly suffered the fate of so many machines that languished on a sales floor so long that the very business charged with profiting from it ends up discarding it like a sack of garbage. It seems impossible in today’s world to think of an icon like the ’69 Charger Daytona as being treated this way when it was new, but the fact remains that the winged monsters released by Dodge have aged like a fine wine, a wine that was odd and strange tasting when it was first released to the public.

The 1969 Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Superbird that followed were necessary evils for the Chrysler Corporation during the days where supremacy on the high-banked tracks of NASCAR meant virtually guaranteed sales in a car-crazed culture. The winged warriors were the ultimate extension of a program that kicked into high gear with the 1968 Dodge Charger 500. That car, with its flush-mounted grille and rear window was supposed to be the virtual aerodynamic equal to the machines being run by Ford and Chevrolet. As it turns out, it didn’t perform to the level company executives wanted, so they unleashed the hounds.