Dodge Charger 1970 R/T SE 440 7.2L

The 1970 Charger R/T SE is the version that confuses people. R/T meant 440 Magnum, heavy-duty everything, and 375 horsepower. SE meant leather, wood grain, and deep-dish wheel covers. Combining them produced a car that Dodge itself struggled to explain, and only a small fraction of 1970 R/T buyers ordered it. Here is what that combination was actually for.

Somewhere in the 1970 Dodge order book there is a combination that reads like a mistake. R/T was the performance package, meaning the 440 Magnum, heavy-duty torsion bars, a stiffer rear leaf setup, and a car built to intimidate. SE stood for Special Edition, which meant leather-faced seats, simulated wood on the dash and doors, and deep-dish wheel covers with the kind of quiet chrome that belonged on something a bank manager drove. Ordering both at once produced a Charger that Dodge’s own advertising never quite figured out how to describe, and relatively few buyers took the swing. The ones who did ended up with something the American industry almost never built.

Two Option Packages That Should Not Have Met

The two packages came from opposite ends of Dodge’s thinking. R/T, for Road and Track, had been introduced on the 1967 Coronet as the division’s blanket performance designation, and it always carried real hardware rather than badges: the big engine, upgraded brakes, heavy-duty suspension, and a Rallye instrument cluster. SE arrived later and pointed the other direction entirely, at buyers who wanted the Charger’s shape without its reputation for aggression. One package existed to make the car quicker. The other existed to make it quieter. Dodge never bothered to prevent a buyer from ordering both, which is how a genuinely odd corner of the 1970 order book came to exist.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

440 Magnum: 375 Horsepower and 480 lb-ft

The engine at the center of it is the 440 Magnum, 7.2 liters, rated at 375 horsepower at 4,600 rpm and 480 lb-ft of torque at 3,200. That torque figure is the whole personality of the car. The 440 does not need to be revved, does not particularly want to be, and delivers its shove from just off idle in a way that makes a two-ton coupe feel considerably lighter than it is. It was also a genuinely durable engine, built on a substantial block with a forged crankshaft, and it tolerated neglect better than almost anything else with comparable output.

What SE Trim Actually Added

The SE package layered a level of finish onto that which no competitor was offering on a performance intermediate. Leather-faced front bucket seats, wood-grain appliqué across the instrument panel and door panels, a light group with courtesy lamps, chrome trim around the pedals, and the distinctive deep-dish wheel covers. On the outside, SE cars typically wore a full vinyl roof and bright trim that softened the Charger’s aggression considerably. Approaching one in a parking lot, the badging tells you nothing useful; you have to look inside, or listen when it starts.

The Chrome Loop Bumper and the 1970 Facelift

Nineteen seventy brought the most recognizable facelift of the second-generation Charger. Dodge fitted a full-width chrome loop front bumper surrounding a revised grille with a horizontal divider, added simulated scoops to the doors, and revised the taillight treatment. That loop bumper is the single fastest way to identify a 1970 from a 1968 or 1969, and it is also the piece that costs the most to replace correctly, because a straight, unpitted original is genuinely hard to find and reproductions vary considerably in fit.

Where the Six Pack and the Hemi Fit

Above the 440 Magnum sat two more options. The 440 Six Pack, with three two-barrel Holleys on an Edelbrock aluminum intake, was rated at 390 horsepower. The 426 Hemi, at 425 horsepower, sat at the top and cost roughly as much as a second small car. Both are worth vastly more today than the four-barrel 440, and both are consequently the subject of a great deal of creative history. The four-barrel 440 R/T is the version most likely to be genuine, most likely to be affordable, and, for anyone intending to drive rather than trailer the car, considerably easier to live with.

10,337 R/T Cars and a Much Smaller Number of These

Dodge built 10,337 Charger R/T models for 1970, a sharp drop from the previous year that reflected both insurance pressure and the arrival of the cheaper Charger 500 further down the range. The SE-equipped share of that R/T production was a distinct minority, which makes a documented R/T SE genuinely uncommon without commanding Hemi money. Verification runs through the fender tag, which encodes the trim level, engine, axle, and paint codes, and through a broadcast sheet if one survives under the rear seat or above the glovebox.

The Rust Map Every Buyer Needs

Rust is the deciding factor on any second-generation Charger and it follows a predictable map. Start at the rear window channel, which traps water under the vinyl roof and rots the roof panel and the trunk floor beneath it. Then check the trunk drop-offs, the rear frame rails ahead of the leaf spring hangers, the floor pans under the front seats, and the lower rear quarters behind the wheels. Vinyl-roof SE cars are more prone to the roof problem than R/T cars without one, which is an unfortunate consequence of exactly the option combination that makes them interesting. Lift a corner of the vinyl before you do anything else, and if the seller objects to that, you have learned something useful.

The Grand Tourer Dodge Never Called One

What the R/T SE actually amounts to is a grand tourer, a category Detroit did not have a name for and mostly did not build. It has the engine to cross a state in an afternoon, the seats and interior finish to make that pleasant, and enough restraint in its presentation that it does not announce itself before it arrives. European manufacturers charged enormous money for that combination and sold it to a specific kind of buyer. Dodge offered it as two check boxes on an order form in 1970, and almost nobody noticed. The buyers who did ended up with the most usable version of the second-generation Charger, and the market has only recently started to agree with them. For anyone who wants to actually cover distance in a 1970 Charger rather than admire one at a show, the SE interior is not a dilution of the R/T package. It is the part that makes the rest of it worth using. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter