The Super Bee was Dodge’s response to the Plymouth Road Runner, which in turn was born to compete against Pontiac’s successful GTO muscle car. The Super Bee lived in the Road Runner’s shadow for its four model years, barely achieving a third of the output the Plymouth generated. This 1969 Super Bee has been owned by the same party and needs restoring, though the engine and transmission have both been rebuilt. From Saugerties, New York, this Dodge is available here on craigslist for $17,500. Gunter Kramer comes through with another hot tip!
In its second outing (1969), Dodge assembled 28,000 Super Bees, but that paled in comparison to the 84,000 Road Runners that Plymouth cranked out. Dodge was supposed to be the performance arm of Chrysler, so it’s likely the performance versions of the Charger and Coronet stole some of the Super Bee’s thunder. Most Super Bee’s were built with the 383 cubic inch Hi-Perf V8 as in the seller’s car given that only a few hundred had Hemi’s and less than 2,000 had 440 6-Packs.
Though the car looks rough, working in its favor is that the engine is original and was rebuilt some time ago. More recently, the 727 automatic transmission was also redone, but it’s waiting to go back into the Dodge. This car didn’t come with many options when new as both the steering and brakes do not come with power assist, the tranny is column-shifted, and the seating arrangement has a bench seat up front.
At 94,000 miles, we’re told the Super Bee still wears its original yellow paint, but the cowl tag is so badly rusted that it’s hard to make out any of the numbers. With a lot of black paint in places to serve as a primer, we can’t make out how badly rusted the Dodge really is. But to help rectify some of the corrosion, new trunk pans are coming with the car along with a new gas tank. There’s a driveshaft sitting in the trunk, and we assume it goes to the car. So, this is a rolling project that’s looking for a new home and an owner that has time and a budget to allocate to the auto.
Wow. A lot of “daylight” between this hulk and the dd gorgeous black 70 from the other day. Looks like it was salvaged from a boneyard
I do like the looks of that 67 Galaxie in the background though…never really understood the spelling Ford chose, but I digress…
Thirty years by the same owner. Let me guess he hates MOPARS!
The car is in such deplorable condition I wouldn’t have high expectations about the motor. I’d sure have a careful look at the engines numbers and it’s rebuild, I mean taking it apart pulling the main caps checking bearings and clearances and on and on before I’d plunk down serious money for this.
Based upon the photos, the car has some pucker issues such as the channel rot around the trunk deck. However, it is still a cool car and worth a in home garage restoration, the only affordable on for this car. If I were not tired of doing this, the price is really not out of line for a cool factor car of my youth.
$18K ? Not a chance, plenty of other muscle memories out there for that are drivers for same or a tad more.
I don’t know that it was Dodge’s answer/response to the Plymouth Road Runner.
They were all Chrysler corporation cars.
It was Dodge and Plymouth division marketing and design teams saying, how can we market this platform to the die hards who want a Dodge name on their car so we can double our money with the same tooling and drivetrain…