When the Charger was introduced in 1966, it was both personal luxury and muscle car rolled into one. Sales of the automobile really took off when the car was redesigned in 1968 along with the rest of Chrysler’s intermediates, taking on something of a fuselage-look with its styling. This 1969 version is an R/T edition that is also numbers-matching with a Magnum 440 V-8 and 4-speed, and it has been sitting for more than 30 years. Resting outside in Manchester, Maryland, the Charger is available here on eBay where the bidding stands at $19,000 but the reserve has not yet been met. You can bypass all that by clicking the Buy It Now button for $24,000.

The Charger has been part of the Dodge line-up on and off for the past 54 years. Subcompacts, full-size sedan, muscle car and personal luxury – they have been built across three platforms and seven generations and are still in production today. Back in the 1960s, you could get a Charger in forms from mild to wild, secretary’s car to street racer. If you’ll recall, a 1969 Charger was one of the “stars” of the Dukes of Hazzard good-old-boy TV show in the 1970s, jumping one obstacle after another like Evel Knievel. If you bought a new Charger R/T (Road/Track) in 1969 with a 440 V-8, you were one of 18,344 such buyers. But if you selected it with a 4-speed manual, that population dropped to just 3,604. The only Charger that would have been any hotter was the Hemi as you couldn’t get a Charger 6-Pack until the following year.

This 1969 Charger R/T is likely for sale because the seller has one too many projects. From the photos provided, you can see there are quite a few cars and trucks sitting around, including a first-generation T-Bird with a Continental kit. The car has been idle since 1998 and, due to rust, “needs lots of panels replaced” although we’re told there are very few issues underneath. The Hemi Orange paint with a black vinyl top and matching interior would have made a bold statement when new. Now the paint is rusty and vinyl roof peeling off. Besides a fair amount of surface rust, I wish the photos would have been more specific as to where the cancer lies.

The interior appears to have fared a little better. The upholstery looks mostly good, but the carpeting is long gone and what we can see of the floors don’t look bad. Unfortunately, no trunk photos are provided, and it would be nice to see what the trunk floor pan looks like along with a view of the rear quarters from the inside out. The instrumentation is said to be intact except the tachometer is missing and the odometer states 1,400 miles, which likely means it flipped over before being taken off the road.

Working in the car’s favor is that the matching engine does try to spin over. The seller lubed up the cylinders, put in a new battery and it showed promise. No mention is made if you can get any movement when trying to shift the transmission through the gears. And there is no fender tag (did someone remove it?). Given what similar Chargers in prime condition are going for from 1969, this could easily turn into a $60,000+ car when restored. At the BIN price, that leaves some $36,000 to work with.