Dodge Coronet 1969 images

This 1969 Dodge Coronet Super Bee carries the rare A12 package, a 463-dollar option that swapped in a 440-cubic-inch V8 wearing three two-barrel carburetors for one strange mid-year run. Only 1,907 were built before Dodge moved on. Stock, these cars ran mid-13-second quarter miles, embarrassing plenty of pricier machinery on the strip.

Dodge Coronet “Super-Bee” for 1969 is on the Chrysler B-body platform, along withÂ the Charger, and both models also share the same rear fascia and the Rallye instrument cluster. The A12 package was introduced mid-year 1969 which gives the Coronet a 440 engine mounted with the six pack-three two barrel Holly carburetors on an aluminium in-take manifold with a lift off fiberglass hood and secured with metal pins. Heavy duty suspension, 15 inch wheels and a host of other performance goodies are included, but for this one year only.

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Our thanks to Gateway Classic Cars for these images

When Plymouth’s Road Runner started outselling everything else in Dodge’s showroom, division boss Robert McCurry wanted an answer of his own. What his stylists came back with was the Super Bee, and for one strange half-season in 1969, it hid a secret most Road Runner buyers could not touch. Order the A12 package and 463 dollars bought a 440-cubic-inch V8 wearing three two-barrel Holley carburetors, a setup that split the difference between Dodge’s standard engine and the vastly more expensive 426 Hemi. Only 1,907 cars ever left the factory with it. Was it worth choosing something that rare over the car everyone already knew?

Half the Price of a Hemi, Almost All the Punch

The A12 package was rated at 390 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque, enough for mid-13-second quarter miles right off the showroom floor. Along with the triple-carb 440, buyers got a Dana 60 rear axle with 4.10 gears, heavy duty suspension, G70x15 tires on black steel wheels, and 11-inch drum brakes, all wrapped under the lift-off fiberglass hood secured with hood pins that this car still wears.

A Name Born From a Boardroom Contest

The Super Bee name itself came out of an internal Dodge styling contest, won by designer Harvey J. Winn, who built it around the Scat Pack bee medallion already used across Dodge performance models. Built on the Coronet two-door coupe from 1968 through 1970, the Super Bee was Dodge’s answer to the Road Runner at a lower price point than the Charger. Of the 1,907 A12 Super Bees built, 1,487 were hardtops, and only 661 of those came with the TorqueFlite automatic rather than the 4-speed manual.

Blue, Black, and Wearing Its Six Pack Proudly

The Super Bee in this gallery wears a deep blue exterior with the A12 package’s signature flat-black fiberglass hood, dominated by a large forward-facing scoop lettered “SIX PACK” in bold red script — Dodge’s branding for the same triple-two-barrel 440 setup that Plymouth badged “Six Barrel” on its own A12 Road Runners that same year. That hood scoop wasn’t just for show; it fed cooler outside air directly to the carburetors, and the hood pins holding it down are visible in these photos exactly where a factory A12 car would have them.

Orange Valve Covers and a Holley Under Glass

Under that fiberglass hood, the 440 wears Chrysler’s factory orange engine paint on the block and heads, with a large chrome air cleaner housing a Holley carburetor at its center — the Holley branding still legible on the assembly in close-up photos. That single big carburetor sits atop the center of the three-two-barrel Six Pack manifold, with the two outer carburetors typically hidden from a straight-on shot but doing the real work under hard acceleration.

Steel Wheels Were the Point, Not an Afterthought

Notice the plain black steel wheels rather than any styled or chrome option — the A12 package specifically mandated 15-inch steel wheels without wheel covers, a deliberate, race-inspired choice that shaved weight and cost rather than an oversight. Combined with the Dana 60 rear axle and heavy-duty suspension covered above, every visual cue on this car traces back to Dodge building a genuine street-legal drag car first and a showroom draw second.

A Package That Vanished as Fast as It Arrived

Because the A12 package existed for barely half a model year before Dodge pulled it from the order sheet, a correctly equipped example like this one represents a genuinely narrow production window — built, sold, and discontinued all within 1969. That brevity is exactly why A12 Super Bees carry such a premium over standard Super Bees today: there simply was never a long production run to draw a larger supply from.

The Interior Kept It Honest

Inside, Super Bee buyers got a no-nonsense bench or bucket seat cabin with a Rallye instrument cluster shared with the Charger, prioritizing a full set of gauges over the idiot-light setup found on cheaper Coronets. There was no attempt to disguise this as a luxury car — the interior matched the exterior’s message perfectly, functional and purposeful rather than plush, which is exactly the formula Dodge needed to compete with Plymouth’s similarly no-frills Road Runner at a comparable price point.

Three Model Years, One Consistent Mission

The Super Bee name carried across the Coronet body from 1968 through 1970 before moving to the smaller Charger platform for its final two seasons, but the mission never changed — deliver genuine big-block performance at a lower price than the Charger R/T or Road Runner-adjacent competition. Of every Super Bee built across that run, the 1969 A12 cars pictured here represent the single most extreme factory expression of that idea, a street car built to embarrass far more expensive machinery at the strip without asking buyers to pay Hemi money to do it.

A Nickname That Stuck for Good Reason

Enthusiasts and period magazines alike quickly shortened “Super Bee A12” down to just “Six Pack car” or “the Six Pack Bee,” a nickname that stuck precisely because the triple-carburetor hood graphic was the single most identifiable thing about the car from across a parking lot. Fifty-plus years later, that same shorthand is still how most Mopar collectors refer to this exact combination, a small piece of evidence for how effectively Dodge’s marketing and the car’s own visual design worked together. These photos, courtesy of Gateway Classic Cars, show that graphic package about as clearly as any reference image available today.

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