Find of the Week: 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T Six Pack

Our last two autoTRADER.ca Find of the Week entries were the environmentally friendly kind of green. But this week it's something that's a different kind of green. The paint kind. It's a classic muscle car with a shade of paint that could only have been found in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And it's a car that must have been working out. Because it's got a six-pack. It's a 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T 440 Six Pack.

While we often talk about how complicated the crossover market is getting these days, with multiple models from the same manufacturer that look to fill every tiny gap in the market, the truth is that the practice is nothing new. It's just that automakers stopped doing it with cars a long time ago.

If you're looking at this car, and you're not intimately familiar with classic Mopars, you're probably thinking, "Isn't that a Charger?" Especially if you're looking at it from the side. And, well, yes. It is. Only it isn't.

It's actually the other way around. The Coronet was a Dodge model starting in 1949. At one point it was the highest-trim car Dodge offered. Though not long after it found itself as the entry-level model. Car nameplates can be fickle like that.

In 1965, the Coronet switched to the intermediate size class, based on the Chrysler B-body chassis. With the growing popularity of the Ford Mustang, Chrysler wanted something to compete. The Charger arrived in 1966 as a more stylish model based on the Coronet. In 1968, both were redesigned. They weren't exactly identical, but they weren't all that far apart, either. Sorry, Dodge fans. The Coronet was by far the bigger seller, though a certain high-jumping orange Charger helped give that model more enduring popularity. And about that piling models to fill every segment? The same car was also available from Plymouth. With four different nameplates. At least the grille and tails offer up big styling differences.

So back to this car. The Coronet. In the 1960s, big engines and high performance was everything. If you couldn't offer something impressive at the top of the range, then your cars at the bottom probably weren't moving either.

Dodge offered the Coronet as an R/T trim. The R/T started off with a great big V8. The 440 Magnum. That's 7.2L of cast iron block with iron heads. The standard version of the engine offered 375 hp and 480 lb-ft of torque, breathing through a single four-barrel carb.

If you had all the dollars, you could upgrade that 440 to a 426 Hemi. But not many people picked that expensive option. Right around 100 in 1969.

This car, though doesn't sport either of those options. Instead, over the years it's borrowed something from elsewhere in the stable. The Six Pack. No, we're not talking abs, though it definitely adds more muscle. For the 1969 Plymouth Road Runner and Super Bee, again cars not far removed from the Coronet, Chrysler tossed the four barrel and added three two-barrel carbs. That's six barrels. 50 percent more airflow than before. It came with a fibreglass pin-on hood in place of the standard hinged version. The changes bumped power to 390 hp and torque to 490 lb-ft.

The seller of this car says that it really was a 440 R/T. So it was the six pack that was added, along with that pinned glass hood. After all, turning a six-cylinder car into an R/T or even a Hemi is far from unusual.

It boasts a three-speed automatic and has 3.55:1 gears in the rear end. So it's more of a cruiser but should still be able to deliver some serious punch.

The car's been recently repainted as well. In the original Seafoam Green. It's a classic car in a colour that's just right for the era. It's for sale in Sherwood Park, just east of Edmonton, AB. And it's ready for tire-smoking summer fun.