1967 Dodge Coronet R/T RT Convertible in Red & 440 Engine Sound

Dodge built just 628 convertible versions of its 1967 Coronet R/T, and owner Glen Kellmann says that in more than twenty years of attending car shows, he has never once come across another one. See his factory 440-powered survivor and hear the story of a car that, as far as its own owner can tell, has no twin.

Just 628 of these were built as convertibles in 1967 out of more than 10,000 R/Ts total, and the man who has owned this one since 2003 says he has never once run into another at a car show, not one, in over two decades of looking. That kind of rarity usually means a car spends its life locked away. This one does not.

The Production Number That Makes This Car Nearly Unique

Dodge’s 1967 Coronet R/T was already a low-volume performance trim, but the convertible body style pushed the numbers into genuinely rare territory – just 628 left the factory that year out of 10,181 total R/Ts built, a figure owner Glen Kellmann has researched extensively since buying the car. This particular example carries the factory 440-cubic-inch big block, the standard engine for the R/T package that year, delivering the kind of low-end torque the Coronet’s mid-size body was built around.

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An Owner Who Has Never Found a Twin

Kellmann told host Lou Costabile that despite attending many car shows over the two-plus decades he has owned the car, he has never come across another 1967 Coronet R/T convertible in the wild, a striking claim for someone who has clearly spent real time in the muscle car show circuit. It underlines just how thin the surviving population of these cars actually is, a 440-powered convertible R/T was not common when new, and decades of attrition, weather damage, and simple neglect have only shrunk that number further.

Why the Convertible Body Style Mattered So Little in 1967

Convertible muscle cars were always a small slice of an already small market. Buyers chasing outright performance in 1967 tended toward the stiffer, lighter hardtop body, since a convertible’s open-top structure added weight and reduced chassis rigidity, a real disadvantage on a car built around straight-line acceleration. That is a big part of why the R/T convertible production numbers landed so far below the hardtop’s, and why finding one intact and unmodified more than half a century later is a genuine rarity rather than just a marketing claim.

Chicago’s Suburbs as an Unlikely Setting for a Muscle Car Find

The video was shot in the western suburbs of Chicago in late August 2017, a region with a strong, if understated, collector-car community built around private storage facilities and regular local shows rather than the more publicized scenes in Southern California or Florida. Costabile’s channel has built a substantial catalog of finds specifically from this Midwest network, and the Coronet fits the pattern, a serious, well-documented survivor that most national car media would never encounter, surfaced through local relationships instead.

What Viewers Noticed in the Comments

The comments brought out viewers with their own history alongside this exact model. One commenter described owning a dark aqua 1967 R/T hardtop in high school back in the 1960s, with a white bucket-seat interior, 440 Magnum engine, dual-point distributor, and Sure-Grip rear end, and recalled two other 1967 R/T hardtops in the same color and area at the time. That kind of firsthand, decades-old memory triggered by a single video is common on Costabile’s channel, where the comment sections often function as an informal oral history of the cars themselves.

The Details That Make This Video More Than a Walkaround

Beyond the basic specs, the video includes a look at the car’s original sales brochure and period paperwork, a detail multiple commenters specifically thanked Costabile for including. It is a small addition, but it grounds the car in its actual factory context rather than presenting it as just another restored classic, viewers get to see exactly how Dodge marketed this trim level when it was new, alongside the real, aged example sitting in front of the camera decades later.

A Rare Survivor Still Being Driven and Documented

Cars this rare usually end up either fully restored showpieces that never see real miles, or forgotten in a barn somewhere waiting to be found. Kellmann’s Coronet has managed neither fate, it has been maintained, documented, and shown, all while its owner keeps looking, and failing to find, another example anywhere close to it. For now, at least on the record this video creates, it stands alone.

How the R/T Package Fit Into Dodge’s 1967 Lineup

The R/T designation, short for Road and Track, sat at the top of Dodge’s mid-size performance hierarchy in 1967, reserved for Coronets and Chargers built with the 440 Magnum or 426 Hemi as standard equipment rather than an option buyers had to seek out separately. That standard-big-block approach set the R/T apart from competitors that still made their largest engines optional extras, and it is part of why R/T-badged cars commanded a real premium over a standard Coronet on the lot in 1967, well before collector value entered the picture decades later.

What a Survivor Like This Is Worth Today

Well-documented, numbers-matching R/T convertibles from this era routinely draw six-figure interest at major collector auctions when they surface, with rarity, originality, and paperwork like the brochure Kellmann keeps with the car all factoring directly into that number. A convertible that’s one of just 628 built, still owned by someone who bought it decades ago rather than flipped it, represents exactly the kind of documented provenance that serious Mopar collectors specifically seek out and are willing to pay a premium for over a car with a murkier history.

The Detail That Convinces Skeptics

Skeptical viewers evaluating a rarity claim like this one typically look for internal consistency: does the paint code match factory records for that combination, does the interior trim align with what R/T convertibles actually received that year, does the build sequence fall within the expected production window. Kellmann’s willingness to walk through the brochure and period paperwork on camera gives exactly that kind of internal-consistency check, rather than asking viewers to simply take an owner’s word for it. It is a small distinction, but it separates a credible rarity claim from the kind of unverifiable story that circulates constantly in the collector car world without ever holding up to real scrutiny.

Watch the full video and tell us what you think, comments are open below.

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