Its model years were 1968 thru '70 with the '69 being the most beautifully executed of the three. It gained the long rectangular taillights over the '68's round double light taillight pairs. The '69's long lit bars perfectly accentuated the car's back end. The '69 does not suffer from the '70's excesses: the chrome bumper which completely loops the car's grill--which truncates the flowing lines of the side view of the car. The '70 also suffered Tacky Marketing Gimmick-itis: fake plastic scoops slapped to the doors.

And I own a '69. Had it since 1978, which is before The Dukes of Hazzard came on the air. I was stunned that my car became the most famous car in America during the late '70s to early '80s thanks to the supposedly indestructible General Lee(48K) (Warner Brothers destroyed 300 Chargers during the production run of Dukes.)

I'll admit it, every Friday night I was glued to the TV watching the General Lee perform impossible stunts and watching Catherine Bach wear impossibly tight cutoffs. The fact that they picked the Charger really doesn't surprise me. It just looks so NASCAR.

Richard Sias is the stylist of the second gen Charger and he went with a "double diamond" theme. Look at the Coke bottle shape of the Charger and how the car bulges out at the wheel wells. Imagine large diamond shapes plastered over the sheet metal. That's the double diamonds Mr. Sias used as the car's theme.

The sheet metal is so right, so utterly the correct shape at every angle of every piece of sheet metal making up the car's skin. There's the aforementioned Coke-bottle pinching at the waist. There are creases in the sheet metal which accentuate this. The "C"-shaped door embossings are echoed in the similarly shaped depressions in the Charger's hood. The upward thrusting lip on the trunk is the perfect end note.

One styling feature which is never written about and which contributes greatly to the car's sporty appearance is its "cab inward" design. Nearly all cars have the one geometric plane extending down the door glass to the door. Second gen Chargers are not like that. The doors are very thick and the door glass is set back from the door's plane. Chargers are big cars, but this "cab inward" styling trick gives the car a definite leg-up from a sportiness standpoint. Then the cab tails off to two extremely thick "C" pillars at the trunk. It's just one more detail to give the Charger that total NASCAR look.

While the second gen Charger may look NASCAR, when it came time to perform on the racetrack, the car turned out to to be as aerodynamic as a brick thanks to its recessed grill and tunnelled rear window glass. Chrysler went on the offensive and produced the '69 Charger 500 with its pushed forward grill and redone, almost fastback, rear window section.

That wasn't good enough. Dodge then produced one of the wildest cars ever to be sold in America--the '69 Charger Daytona. It's otherwise known, along with its counterpart, the '70 Plymouth Roadrunner Superbird, as the Wing Cars. There's a two foot tall spoiler the back and a one and half foot nose on the front to cleave thru the air. If you see one on the road and once in a while it does happen, you take notice. Once Chrysler put these cars in action, there was no stopping them. Almost. The cars were so successful that NASCAR changed the rules so their aero improvements were no longer welcome on the high banks of Talledega.

Anyway, I own mine and given the number of years I've had the car, there have been buku improvements. As you see, the car has a nonstock paint job which I'm sure irritates purists to no end.

Well, tough. It's my car. I'm never gonna sell it. And I'll do with it what I please. But you will notice that my paint job just takes existing creases in the sheet metal and makes them more graphic thanks to the two tones. Why red? The car has a red interior. And thanks to the power of Armor All, the people who see the interior ask who redid it. When I tell them it's original (well, OK, so I finally replaced the carpet), they're floored.

If you want to own a terrific toy, you can't beat a muscle car.