A 3rd gen Charger from 1974 that I built for a friend.
In the middle of the 60’s , car manufacturers in the USA wanted to make some sort of compact car “pony cars” but fast at the same time. And the Mustang was born. Ford basically refined the muscle car industry by doing it small. There were 3 variants of the mustang you could see.
Hardtop coupe 2 door (square top)
Fastback coupe 2 door (bubble top the first year but fastback the next years)
And the convertible 2 door
But Dodge saw that the car has a success , he begins doing on his own project. We had to wait till 1966 to see the new model: the Charger.
The first two years were extremely looking fastbacks. The car was heavily inspired by the AMC Marlin (despite being a 2 door , this car is soooo loooong!) and Dodge basically took the concept out of the Marlin and and rebranded it as Charger . The front however , is was from the Coronet , a lower class before the Charger and it fits very well. The rear is nothing you ever saw in the the 60’s. This is probably one of the parts that stayed or the concept . The rear is just a big light bar and a metallic bumper. I mean I’m not a big fan of light bar taillights but I just have to admit that on the first gen Charger , it looks ugly. (I probably lost some people now). But the first gen are my favorites along with the third ones.
The second gen are the most unique ones. They downgrade a little to look almost as a Coronet. But we can clearly see that it has his own inspiration. You can look at the photos above while I tell you what’s unique about the second gen. The front wasn’t straight , it was curvy ,the same for the rear too, you’ve got the windows that go up for the rear and all of a sudden it falls . (And for the video games enthusiasts, yes I will tell you what impact those cars got in racing games). And probably the most recognized muscle car cause of one movie that change the car chases in cinema history. This movie was called euhhh… hmmm… b… bull… hmmm… pfff i don’t really remember the name but It was from 1969 or something. Bullit(1968)for those who didn’t get reference . But the worst of it is that this wasn’t the biggest (in terms of lengths,width or height) muscle car , it was just placed between the mustang and another car that I didn’t remember. Yes we can talk about the general lee but it didn’t impact me as much as the Bullit edition. and it was also present in the movie Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) but encounter a pretty tragic fate. From the three years the second gen was built , my favorite will be the 68 version. Because he has hidden headlights without the split grille , that makes car more mysterious and dark vibes from the one from Bullit. And it’s my favorite taillights combination for this car.
After 1970 , the Charger received a new design and it’s not disappointing at all. Really love the 3rd gen variants R/Ts like the variants SEs (which is the civilian version of the Charger or economy version). Actually the one that I built is not the version I prefer the most , if you saw the original movie Gone In 60 Seconds (1974) at a certain moment, there is a garbage truck blocking of the road after a good moment of pure chase , and when the truck stop at the intersection this green Charger with black stripes and vinyl roof with what seems to be dragsters wheels in the back with classic rallye rims , had to do an emergency stop by doing a fishtail because this truck is in the middle of the road and (she wasn’t the escapist, yes cause the driver was female). The next minutes will broke your heart but I leave it to you to watch this movie with intense 40 minutes of pure carnage. Really unfortunate cause this car didn’t not have so much credits and it would’ve been a great thing seeing this Charger in action on another scenes or maybe have its own movie . But i can talk but nothing is gonna be down to make something about this car , and it’s gonna be forgotten just like some other cars. But yes those cars really aged well and still appreciate by muscle cars communities and video games.
After 1975 the Charger got a new look. This was the fourth and the last generation of Charger after a long Time. This one , despite being a nice looking car, doesn’t look like a charger at all. It looks more Chevy Monte-Carlo than Charger. If they rebadged it into another name , I would have love it more (and I do know it’s was also named ‘Cordoba’ but since Dodge is division of Chrysler , it doesn’t really count. Both Cordoba and Charger are the same cars).Don’t have l a lot to say about that generation rather that this was the last after a long time. As I am writing this post , I read that this car actually partipate in the 24H LeMans and it was named Olympia Beer. Is was also one of two nascar cars that participated in this race.
While we gonna make our way into the video games part , I would like to add that there’s the variants of the 69 Chargers that were called Daytona as the same for Plymouth with their Superbirds. Beautiful cars indeed with what Richard Petty race it and (unfortunately) accidentally wreck it and Richard Petty also raced the Third gen Charger.
I first knew the Charger when I was a little younger when we played ( what is gonna be Race driver Grid) Pro race driver a racing game not everyone knows but I’ve grown up since I feel that it is a little off track to see this car in this kind of game along with another corvette and a Shelby cobra AC. But It was my go to car. And we’ve got a whole new package of racing car games that my big brother bought , and this was Need For Speed Undercover (PS2) . The PS2 version was widely criticized because of his cheating AIs but apparently had a better handling system that the PS3/XBox version. I am not going to go spend talking video games specifications because this is not the goal of this post and it’s gonna take 2333 more lines to read. But maybe a little fact about Undercover , one of the only NFS games where you can do a 360 and recover from (and your points bar count that and starts to rise). No wonder why my brothers hated me because every time we did a split screen race battle , they would always win because I’m still rolling in this b-body while they already finish , and this is with this game I discover the Challenger but this is for another post. And it’s just a beautiful car indeed, but yeah I already knew this car in The Fast And The Furious (2009) the fourth, where Bryan O’Conner reunites with Dominic Toretto for stopping a villain in Mexico. I was so young maybe 6 or 7 y/o and it was my big sister who was watching the movie, and I loved the Charger in the movie along with the Chevelle. This is the first Fast And The Furious Movie I’ve watched. The Charger from the fourth, is so far my favorite variant of the Charger In all of the F&Fs movies . Still today the Charger have a meaning to me and to be the first muscle car I discover, i am not disappointed to have discover classic cars and everything. I’ve downloaded two Need For Speed games I’ve never played. Need For Speed Carbon (2006) and Need For Speed Pro Street (2007) I will do a post to show you my whole line of muscle cars .
I’ve met this new friend but is gonna be anonymous, that my parents knew his parent via zoom . And one day my mom told me that I should say at least hello to their son who was the same age to me but a little older. And I said hello to the family and we go to know each other really quick , they know that I love to draw (that’s something that everyone knows when they first meet me) and my mom thought it would be funny to also show what I loved to built , and (this is something not everyone knows) and there were really impressed. And he was really interested to me , something I’ve never feel since I was born (except my family) outside of my family . So his mom decided to come to our house to delivering some food and stayed here for talking . So we talked for hours and never see the time flew really fast . But at the end , the reason why I did this for this, was because he offered me a twin sketchbook and now I can draw characters without having to take out a A4 paper. When this is your family that offered you a gift , you can kind of expecting that it will happening, but this their responsibility and because they love you , but when it comes to someone outside of your family , it means something to you , like you have the confirmation that you exist and there is people that will care about you in the future. I want thank him for the sketchbook he gave me and the package of pencils that he presented to me for my sister when she’s gonna go into France for job reasons , to buy me those packages. I want thank him in advance for that.
