Chrysler legend and lore when it comes to the Musclecar Era is a strange thing. There is no mystery to where all eleven 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles wound up, but there are many questions about Hemi/4-speed Plymouth Belvedere police package vehicles from 1967. The LO23 Hemi Dart program is perfectly decoded, but there are questions involving 1972 model year 440-6 engines escaping the factory. You can pick and choose your poison and pursue it all you want. If you’re lucky, you come up with gold. Or you might end up on a snipe hunt that will lead you into a hole deeper than anything Alice ever fell into.
Case in point: the 1970 Dodge Charger Daytona prototype. The car is known to have existed, because photos dated February 1970 were found of the car. Painted F6 Green Metallic over F5 SubLime, sporting a white vinyl top, white interior and a woodgrain wheel..and the funkiest little tube bumper ever fitted to a car…what has come to be known as the “Watermelon” has been a kind of myth, because while there are photographs of the car in the Hamtramck Assembly parking lot, the car itself has freaking vaporized into thin air and there’s zero trace of it. Nobody knows where the hell it went. Here’s how far gone from the real world it is: Gary and Pam Beineke and Mike Goyette, the people behind Dayclona and the folks that have built such phantoms as the 1971 Daytona, 1971 Superbird, and the 1972 Plymouth GTX, built an example a few years back.
Does that mean the car doesn’t exist? No, it doesn’t. It just means that nobody has located the real-deal car. But if an eBay ad is to be believed, the spoiler might have just appeared on the market. Could it be the real thing? We’d want some kind of analyzation before we’d agree, but with the wing priced at over eleven thousand dollars on ye olde eBay right now, the chance to own what might potentially be proof of the Watermelon wing car might be tempting. Or, you might just wind up owning a wing that smells oddly like roasted snipe. Your call.
eBay Link: Possibly the 1970 Dodge Charger Daytona wing?
You know what they say – a fool and his money are easily parted…
The provenance story stinks. Wouldn’t the seller have followed up with the guy who sold him the wing and ask “What happened to the rest of the car?” Also the story assumes somebody took the wing off the car and disposed of it separately. Who in their right mind would do that unless the car was wrecked, and even then who in their right mind would do that? The only possible explanation is the dismantler didn’t know what he had. Yes, it happens but “counterfeit” is a much more likely explanation. It could even be an honest counterfeit as in an early attempt to do what the Beinekes have done. What do the guys on the vintage Charger forums have to say?
On further reflection, another possibility is the dismantler knew the car had been stolen and he didn’t want anybody to know what he had. Still, “counterfeit” is a much more likely explanation.
I have a fender of off a 1970 charger that looks like a regular fender but was actually cut down from Richard Petty’s Superbird. I will gladly sell it for 10k, lol