Legions of cool muscle cars have been saved from the crusher, dragged from barns, pulled from muddy fields, and otherwise saved from an ignominious fate of wanton neglect. Paul Prescott's 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona is the first car we have ever heard of being saved from the very dealership lot that it was sitting on. See, this car was a victim of its own time and nearly suffered the fate of so many machines that languished on a sales floor so long that the very business charged with profiting from it ends up discarding it like a sack of garbage. It seems impossible in today's world to think of an icon like the '69 Charger Daytona as being treated this way when it was new, but the fact remains that the winged monsters released by Dodge have aged like a fine wine, a wine that was odd and strange tasting when it was first released to the public.

The 1969 Charger Daytona and the Plymouth Superbird that followed were necessary evils for the Chrysler Corporation during the days where supremacy on the high-banked tracks of NASCAR meant virtually guaranteed sales in a car crazed culture. The winged warriors were the ultimate extension of a program that kicked into high gear with the 1968 Dodge Charger 500. That car, with its flush mounted grill and rear window was supposed to be the virtual aerodynamic equal to the machines being run by Ford and Chevrolet. As it turns out, it didn't perform to the level company executives wanted, so they unleashed the hounds.

Engineers were tasked with creating what they believed would be the ultimate speedway weapon. After extensive wind-tunnel testing and research, the end product was a Charger that was dimensionally different than anything Mopar fans had seen before. Equipped with a nose cone, a nearly two foot tall wing on the back, and a flush-mounted rear window, the huge car had a drag coefficient of 0.28, an impressive number even today. While all this was awesome for racing, NASCAR mandated that the companies raced cars that they actually sold, so 503 examples were produced and sent to dealers to be consumed by the general public. There was one problem with that plan in that few people wanted to actually drive something that looked this crazy on the street. This is where the story of Paul Prescott's car truly begins.

It arrived as an unexpected and frankly unwanted surprise on the back of a car hauler to Conneaut, Ohio's Al's Motors, the local Dodge dealer. According to Prescott, Al's was the place to buy a Dodge muscle car during this period in time and suspicions are high that when dealers themselves failed to order these cars on their own, the examples that sat in the factory holding lot were dispersed to the dealerships that had shown acumen in moving high performance cars in the past. According to history gathered by Prescott through the late Albert Mucci who owned the dealership, he asked the truck driver what dealer was going to get "stuck with that goofy car?" The driver looked at his paperwork and told Mucci, "I guess you do!" The car caused a stir locally and was the subject of more than one spirited test drive, its single 440ci engine and Torqueflite being worked as hard as they could work. Each test drive ended with the same result though, and that was a smiling pilot and a frustrated salesman, or worse. "After the car was mostly back together and I had it out, the stories started coming," Paul Prescott said. "Guys would tell me how they drag raced it and one guy actually hit a mail box with it on a test drive. I heard that story probably 20 years after it happened and I then knew where the crease I found in the rear quarter panel came from that I found when I stripped the body."

The car sat until 1970 when a buyer came in, got the keys, and the financing information went to the bank. Three days later the car was back on the lot, the dealer once again held the title and the potential buyer was presumably walking to work. The money end of the deal had failed and as the days went by the unloved Charger Daytona gathered more dust and conversely, less interest.

Sometime in 1971, Mucci's frustration level at seeing the car every day he came into work boiled over. He had his parts man check the dealer inventory and after determining that they had the pieces, he shipped the car to a local dealer to have it converted into a "regular" Charger. The nose cone, front clip, and wing were removed. On went a proper 1969 Charger front clip, a 1968 Charger grill, and a 1969 Charger hood. The Daytona hood was used by the body shop to repair a 1970 Charger. The car was also given a fresh coat of resale red paint. No one knows what became of the original nose cone but the wing went back to the dealer where it was found to be used as a hand wheel chock for the guys in the service department.

The car was back on the lot listed as a 1969 Charger. Mind you it was not listed as a Daytona or an R/T, just a Charger, and the timing could not have been worse. Once the first gas crunch hit, big-block cars were a hard enough sell, let alone one that had been languishing for years and wasn't even a "cool" model. It moved from the front of the lot, to the middle of the lot, to the back of the lot, where it sat before being stuck in the dealer's auxiliary storage area. Then, in 1974 there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, the car probably thought it was an oncoming train, but the reality was that its luck had already bottomed out and things were about to take a turn for the better.

Paul Prescott's brother, Frank, had just sold a 1970 383 Charger and was in the market for another hunk of Mopar Muscle to cruise. Having been friends with the Mucci family, he called the dealer to find out what had ever happened to the Daytona. We're guessing Mucci nearly leapt through the phone line to close the deal with Frank Prescott, and close it he did. Frank drove the unloved car off the lot for the princely sum of $1,500. With the car came the front fenders, the belly pan, and the thoroughly hashed rear wing. Amazingly, Frank became the first titled owner of a car that had been delivered to the dealer lot nearly five years earlier.

He swapped the factory wheels for some steel wheels with dog dish caps and drove the car for years, likely flummoxing all the hardcore Mopar guys wherever he went. Remember, the flush mounted window doesn't jive with the nose and with the body shop having filled the mounting holes for the wing, this thing had to have looked like a real freak of nature to every gearhead that saw it. "The first show I took it to, I didn't even bring the car to display," Paul said with a laugh. "The car still had the '68 nose on it and no wing. I was parked off to the side and I looked over to see a few guys crawling all over my car. The first guy I saw when I walked back over said, 'Is this a 500 or a Daytona? It was the first time I realized that this thing may be special."

Through the 1970s it carried Frank around, and when his kids showed up, his time as a family man was ready to begin. Luckily for the car, this was not going to be another period of hibernation. As Paul Prescott tells it, his brother came to the house in 1980 with a deal. He talked to the freshly driver-license—equipped little brother that always loved his car and offered it to him for $700, precisely the amount of the new lawn tractor he wanted to buy to care for his yard at home. Paul's first car is the one you see on the pages before you, although it looked nothing like this if you remember correctly. "It was funny because the year before I got it a friend of mine from school wanted to buy it and I was the go-between," Paul said. "He never had the money and then I was able to buy it. The beginning of the next school year he had saved the money but I already owned the car!" Imagine being a high-school kid with a big-block Charger when The Dukes of Hazzard was at its peak of its popularity. That was Paul's life in the early 1980s!

With his meager teenaged bank account, Paul scraped up Daytona parts here and there when he could find them, but by the middle 1980s reproduction parts had hit the market and that's when he put the Daytona back into Daytona form. It drove with its matching-numbers engine right up until 2001 when a healthier 440 was installed, and after a time with the new engine in the car Paul decided that the whole package needed to be "brought up to code" and he tore the car down to the shell. He built his own rotisserie, mounted the body on it, and began to tackle the complete restoration of this car by himself through tech stories in Mopar Muscle and tips he learned from his fellow car guy buddies.

It may have taken the better part of half a decade to feel like it, but this 1969 Charger Daytona has been loved since the day that Frank Prescott saved its life at Al Mucci's car dealership in 1974. Seldom have we ever heard of a car so tough to sell but clearly this machine's destiny was to land in the loving arms of a family that would not only enjoy it, but ultimately bring it to a level that's arguably better than new. The Unloved? No so much anymore. We love a happy ending, don't you?

See all 51 photos Today the 1969 Charger Daytona is seen as one of the most iconic cars ever produced by Chrysler, but when they were new, the cars were a hard sell. Why? No one had ever seen anything like it on a dealer lot before.

See all 51 photos As incredible as it sounds, the rear wing on this car was being used as a chock block at a car dealership when Paul Prescott's brother Frank bought the car. When he bought it, the nose cone and other Daytona pieces had been removed!

See all 51 photos The numbers-matching 440 that came out of the car is resting comfortably and Paul has a healthier weapon in the car these days. Built to be a torque churning beast, this thing can kill tires at will.

See all 51 photos The "Day 2" look of this car is really sealed with the Appliance slot mags that live on the corners. One of the most popular wheel designs of the 1970s, they are making a strong comeback these days for their vintage appeal.

See all 51 photos The vintage look carries over into the engine bay with the t-bolts on the valve covers and the big ACCEL Super Coil. The Dale Francis built 440 has enough power to push this car into the 12s on street tires. That's grunt!

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See all 51 photos We wish people would get back to the fun practice of naming their street cars. The "Winged Express" lettering on the trunkid of the Charger Daytona is pretty much perfect.

See all 51 photos Paul Prescott (left) and older brother, Frank, pose with the '69 Daytona that's been in the family since 1974. Between them, almost 100,000 fun miles has been rolled onto the odometer.

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See all 51 photos This vintage photo shows what the car looked like when Paul's big-brother, Frank, bought it. There was really no trace of its Daytona lineage unless you looked at the window sticker. The car was transformed with old dealer stock parts to what you see here after sitting on the lot for 5 years!

See all 51 photos The miles, the years, and the environment had taken their toll on the Daytona before Paul went into full restoration mode. His first-ever full bore resto job, Paul Prescott did an amazing job collecting the parts to make the car "right" again.

FAST FACTS

1969 Dodge Charger Daytona | Paul Prescott | Conneaut, Ohio

ENGINE

Type: 445ci RB-series big-block Chrysler

Bore x stroke: 4.350 (bore) x 3.75 (stroke), 445 ci

Block: factory RB, prepped by Dale Francis Engineering and Race Engines

Rotating assembly: factory forged crankshaft, stock connecting rods, Keith Black

10.5:1 hypereutectic pistons

Cylinder heads: stock 71-72 440 heads (casting #3462346), ported, polished,

cc-matched by Dale Francis Engineering and race engines

Camshaft: Erson hydraulic flat-tappet cam

Valvetrain: stock valves, Erson valve springs, Crane 1.6 adjustable rockers,

Cloyes double-roller timing chain, Smith Brothers push rods

Induction: Holley 750cfm carb, Edelbrock Performer RPM intake manifold

Fuel system: factory mechanical style pump

Exhaust: Doug's headers 2-inch primary headers, custom exhaust collectors back

Ignition: MSD 6AL ignition box and distributor

Cooling: stock radiator with Flow Kooler water pump

Fuel: gasoline

Engine built by: Dale Francis Engineering and Race Engines

DRIVETRAIN



TCI 10-inch Street Fighter converter (3,000-3,500 stall)

Driveshaft: stock

Rearend: Chrysler 8.75 rear end with 3.55 gears SureGrip

CHASSIS

Front suspension: stock with Monros Gasmatic shocks

Rear suspension: stock with Monroe Gasmatic shocks

Steering: stock power steering

Brakes: stock 11x3 drums (front); stock 11x2.5 drums (rear)

Chassis: Competition Engineering subframe connectors



Wheels: 15x6 Appliance aluminum slot mags (front); 15x8.5 Appliance

slot mags (rear)

Tires: BFGoodrich 235/60R15 (front); BFGoodrich 275/60R15 (rear)

INTERIOR

Seats: stock

Instruments: stock with vacuum gauge added, shift light

Stereo: Sanyo AM/FM schedule cassette/cd player, Pioneer four-way speakers,

California 100W amp

Steering wheel: stock three-spoke

