It was 1969, and the B-bodies from the Dodge Boys were making some big waves. Dodge Charger 500s were tearing up NASCAR’s short tracks. Bewinged Charger Daytonas had broken 200 mph on super-speedways. Coronet-derived Super Bees terrorized empty stretches of highway in the wee hours of the weekend. So how was Chrysler able to finance all that Saturday & Sunday excess? By selling a lot of Coronet 440s on Monday, that’s how.
First, a few notes on Mopar nomenclature: For 1969, all Dodge passenger cars fell into one of three categories: The compact A-body (Dart); full-size C-body (Polara/Monaco); and the midsize Coronet and Charger B-bodies. Although various trim levels and option packages created a hierarchy within each category, today we’ll concentrate on those specific to the B-bodies. The Charger was available in base, R/T, or SE/500 trim (which technically included the Charger Daytona), and the Coronet was available in Deluxe trim (which included the Super Bee) as well as 440, 500, and R/T option levels. Got that? All right, now on to the engines:
The 1969 Coronet offered seven engine choices, starting with the base Slant Six. From there, however, it was all V8, from the small-block “LA” 318 (not to be confused with the earlier polyspherical 318) and big-block 383 and 440 “B” engines, all the way up to the big Kahuna 426 Hemi.
Quite confusingly, Dodge nomenclature included both a 440 engine and a Coronet 440 trim level, although the two were mutually exclusive: A Coronet in 440 trim could not be had with 440 cu.in under its hood. The largest engine available for the Coronet 440 trim level was the 383 cu in V8 in two- or four-barrel guise. The Magnum 383 was restricted to Super Bee, and the Magnum 440 to the R/T.
With all of that out of the way, we can focus on the Coronet at hand. It’s equipped, as most were, with an LA-series 318 cu in engine sending 230 hp and 340 lb-ft. of torque through a TorqueFlite transmission, in this case the A904 (light-duty) version. Sales figures indicate that this was the most common engine/transmission combination for Coronet 440s, and it’s not hard to figure out why: Since their introductions, both the “new” 318 and A904 had proven themselves to be stout and reliable power train components (both have long since achieved “cockroach” status among Mopar enthusiasts because they simply refuse to die).
A sterling power train, however, is not enough to keep a fairly pedestrian ’60s Dodge on the road for close to 45 years. Achieving that kind of longevity takes a little help from the environment. This Coronet appears to have been sold new by Parrish & Clark, in Tulsa, OK. At the time, Parrish & Clark claimed to be Oklahoma’s largest Dodge and Plymouth agency, and also was the co-sponsor of the famous buried 1957 Belvedere. What does all that mean to the survival of vintage tin? Well, Tulsa rarely sees temperatures below freezing and has an average annual snowfall of about nine inches. With little-to-no corrosive salt on the roads and mostly hot & dry conditions, Tulsa has an excellent climate for the preservation of sheet metal. But what are the chances this Coronet spent its entire life in Oklahoma?
Pretty low, it turns out. Note the Colorado “Rockies” license plate in the above photo. At some point, this Coronet made its way across the short stretch of shared CO-OK border, and given the lack of rust there’s a good chance it spent its time in the eastern part of the state. The Rocky Mountains may be Colorado’s defining geographical feature, but the massive rain-shadow desert in the eastern half of the state is much friendlier to cars–dry, dusty and more like ranch land than foothills.
Further helping its chances of survival, our feature Coronet was not ordered with a rust-harboring vinyl roof; apparently, the original buyers weren’t suckered in by the Dodge Boys’ White Hat Special. Not that this Coronet was devoid of options: Those hubcaps are the optional “deep-dish” type with a prominent Fratzog in the middle—and all four of them are (amazingly) accounted for.
The handy chart above shows no shortage of available performance and luxury packages for the Coronet, from the infamous “all-engine, no options” Super Bee to the fairly luxurious Coronet 500. The R/T combines performance and luxury, while the cheapskate-special Deluxe covers the very lowest end of the spectrum. If you add up the sales numbers for every Coronet other than the 440, you end up with total production of around 100,000 units.
The Charger and its derivatives sold about 70,000 vehicles in 1969, which was down significantly from the previous year. Now, selling 170,000 B-bodies is nothing to sneeze at, but what really helped amortize the tooling costs of all B-body derivatives was the 440 package, which alone represented more than 105,000 sales–that’s over one-third of total B-body sales.
Every Dodge dealer in the country may have had a Super Bee and a Charger R/T in the showroom, but they had 10 or 15 Coronet 440s parked out back for customers who weren’t especially concerned about dominating the boulevard at midnight.
Oh yes…what’s that we see in the background mural in the top image? Why, it’s the Road Runner himself, leaning against a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner as both of them look down forever on the humble Coronet 440. Actually, the Road Runner has a connection to the Coronet. Introduced by Plymouth as a bare-bones, B-body muscle car in 1968, it rapidly outsold Dodge’s Coronet R/T, which cost more and was hardly “bare-bones.”
In a typical Mopar inter-divisional squabble, Dodge dealers insisted on a Dodge-badged analog to the Road Runner; thus was the Coronet-derived Super Bee born, in mid-1968. The story of Plymouth’s B-bodies is much the same as Dodge’s, with multiple specialty trim lines spun off the base Satellite. Because virtually all of today’s attention goes to Super Bees, Road Runners, Daytonas and R/Ts, it’s rare to see a Coronet 440 cross the auction block under the lights and TV cameras. Still, make no mistake about it: The lowly 440 trim level helped make the rest of those vehicles possible. And so ends this paean to volume leaders.
(revised and updated version first posted in 2016)
Related CC reading:
1965 Dodge Coronet 500: Family Carma Paul N
1966 Dodge Coronet 500: This B-Body Earns An ‘A’ JP Cavanaugh
1967 Dodge Coronet R/T Convertible: Subtle Changes, Big Engine Paul N
1968 Dodge Coronet 500: My Youthful Desire Dave Skinner
This is my very favorite generation of B body. The styling was better than the earlier cars and it was the last years with a body that felt really solid.
Were Dodge and Rambler the only two that loved that 330-440 naming convention? Rambler got up to 770 and Dodge hit 880. Did anyone ever offer a 110 or a 220?
The base Rambler American was a 220. In the ’50s, the 1/2 ton International pickup was the L-110.
Mercedes also had a 220, in the W115 series
Rambler used 880 and 990 for the Ambassador line.
Perhaps because 220, 440, 330 and such can be multiples of amicable numbers (and thus possess a beauty for mathematicians), they seem to have been used as model designations unrelated to the three numeral string’s usual function of (usually with some rounding up or down) indicating engine displacement (Kawasaki 440=440 cm3; Mercedes-Benz 220=2.2 liters; Oldsmoble 330=330 cid etc). AMC used 660, 770, 880 and 990 to tag a model’s place in the hierarchy and in Australia Chrysler used 660 and 770 for their blinged-up Hillman Hunter and Valiant respectively; they also called the Hunter a “Royal” in case 660 was too abstract for the colonials. There, the Mark 1 Ford Cortina was sold as a 220 & 440 to distinguish between the standard and “deluxe” editions but instead of a 330 to slot between the two they released a 240. 550 is also a footnote because the Mercedes-Benz R230 (2001-2011) was unusual because of the quirk of the SL 550 (2006-2011), a designation used exclusively in the North American market, the RoW (rest of the world) cars retaining the SL 500 badge even though both used the 5.5 litre (333 cubic inch) V8 (M273).
Over here Austin offered an A110 Westminster in the sixties, a sort of scaled up Cambridge in the key of Farina. Austin’s A numbers were vaguely indicative of the bhp of the model in question.
They really got their styling together at this time. Still looks good.
Dodge initially refused to have a version of the 1968 Road Runner since they, like much of the rest of Chrysler management, thought the Road Runner would be a flop. They even declined to have an identical set of production computer cards created, a typically lengthy task, which would have been much easier if it had been done at the same time as the Plymouth.
Of course, when the Road Runner turned out to be a smash hit, Dodge was tripping all over themselves to get their Super Bee version into production by mid-year. Unfortunately, it never sold anywhere near the numbers of the Plymouth, although, frankly, it was a more serious musclecar with some nice features, a big one being that it used the Charger’s rallye dash instead of the Road Runner’s low-brow Belvedere gauges.
A and B engines were Chrysler’s names for small and big block V8s, respectively. “LA” meant Low-deck A-block – naming engines after cities was a Ford thing.
I think LA meant lightweight A block.
That’s my understanding courtesy of Allpar.
A good looking car all these decades later .
The Coronet’s that preceded this one were stout too, I remember many young guys in the early 1970’s trying hard to kill their hand me down Coronet four door to no avail .
-Nate
@Ed Stuchbery
Yes. Allpar is my source, too.
I used to read through Allpar plenty. I don’t care for the updated layout.
For some reason I cannot reply directly to a comment