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Chrysler Valiant Charger

Overview

Chrysler Australia could not afford a sports car, so it cut one out of a family sedan. The VH Valiant's wheelbase came down six inches to 105, the roof was pulled into a fastback, the B-pillar was thrown away and about 150kg went with it. The whole exercise cost roughly two million Australian dollars, which was small money for a new body even in 1971.

What arrived in August 1971 was the Charger, and Australia took to it immediately. It won Wheels Car of the Year for 1971. The Hey Charger television campaign, all kids flashing a two-fingered V at passing cars, put the name into the national vocabulary inside a season. Within twelve months the coupe was half of all Valiant sales, and at its peak Charger production ran to 80 percent of Chrysler Australia's Valiant output.

Underneath sat the other half of the story. The Hemi six was an Australian-developed straight six, and in 265ci R/T form with three sidedraught Weber carburettors it made 302bhp, which was more than most of the V8s it was parked next to. The Charger ran seven years, four series and 31,857 cars, but its reputation was made in the first eighteen months and has not moved since.

Distinctions

The defining attributes and collector status that make this car garage-worthy.

Poster Car

The car on the bedroom wall, the one people dreamed about before they could drive.

Octane Files Select

Renowned for its history, engineering, or cultural weight.

Collectibility scorecard

Rated 1 to 10 on the traits that matter for owning, driving, and holding on to a car like this.

Desirability

8/10

Rarity

6/10

Driving thrill

7/10

Investment trajectory

7/10

Usability

6/10

Ease of restoration

5/10

Cultural impact

8/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Carburettors throughout, three Webers at the top of the range, and a mechanical fuel pump. The VH ran breaker points. Electronic ignition arrived with the VJ in 1973 and is the only electronic system the car ever received: no engine management, no fuel injection, no electronic transmission control, no driver aids of any kind. Steering is a recirculating-ball box, throttle and clutch are cable and rod, the choke is a knob on the dash. A VH on its own would sit at a genuine 1; the VJ onward earns the 2 on ignition alone. Chrysler's Electronic Lean Burn system never reached a Charger, arriving on the CM Valiant in November 1978, after Charger manufacture had stopped.

Market data

Demand tier, price trend, and typical values by condition. Our own assessment, not a quoted valuation.

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

Strong, sustained collector demand. Good examples never wait long for a buyer.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

Values are climbing. The market wants more of these than exist.

Price by condition

Driver

$35k

Excellent

$62k

Concours

$90k

Australian Muscle Car Sales lists 117 verified Charger sales since 2003: low A$35,000, average A$137,047, high A$395,000. The two ends of that range have been moving in opposite directions. Ordinary 770s have climbed, from A$46,000 for a VK in June 2019 to A$74,990 for a CL in June 2025, with a 1972 VH 770 265 Hemi at A$99,000 back in February 2021. The E-cars peaked earlier: an E49 Big Tank made A$395,000 in December 2020, another E49 A$265,000 in June 2022, and an E49 Track Pack A$245,000 in May 2025. So the top has come off its 2020 high while the bottom has been catching up, which is why the trajectory is read off the volume car rather than the halo. The band below is a Charger 770 with a Hemi six or the 318 V8; R/T, every E-code and the 770 SE are excluded. Converted at AUD/USD 0.705, verified 14 August 2026. As with every Australian car of this era, home-market money is the ceiling.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

Wheels timed the 1972 E49 as the fastest-accelerating car Australia had ever built.

Callout

Only 149 E49s were built, and 21 of those carry the 160-litre Big Tank.

What to watch for

Start with the body, because the body is what will empty the account. Rust collects in the sills, the sub-frame mounting points, the firewall, the door bottoms, the window surrounds and the turret, and leaking windscreen seals feed most of it. Check the front chassis rails for cracks around the steering box mount. Doors that need lifting to shut mean the shell has moved. Floor pans, boot floors, glass, rubbers and lens sets are all reproduced. Outer panels and mouldings are not. Good second-hand ones are scarce and dear, and a car needing a rear quarter is a car needing a panel beater to make one by hand, which is the difference between a project and a money pit. For provenance, Valiant Infobase holds Chrysler Australia's own build records and will decode a car's CAL card into a factory spec sheet for a modest fee. On an R/T or any E-code car that report is not optional. The option codes were stamped rather than badged, a Six Pack manifold bolts onto any 265, and the clone trade is real and openly traded. Buy the paperwork first and the car second.

The Story

Driving character

The Hemi six is the reason to drive one. It is a light, seven-main-bearing Australian straight six with hemispherical chambers, and on three sidedraught Weber 45 DCOEs it does not sound remotely like a six. It inhales with a hard flat rasp that arrives about a third of the way down the pedal and does not let up. The E38 runs a 14.8-second quarter with one gear change, which tells you how much of the work is torque rather than revs. The E49 pulls to 5,600rpm for its 302bhp, and Wheels timed it at 6.1 seconds to 60mph and 14.4 through the quarter. The chassis is the surprise. Leo Geoghegan, who developed the race cars, said the E49 handled straight off the production line when most touring cars needed weeks of fiddling to be driveable. A light engine on a 105-inch wheelbase with a track wider than any American A-body gives the Charger a keenness through corners that a Falcon GT carrying an iron V8 never had. Brakes are the honest weakness and they are what cost Chrysler at Bathurst. A 245 automatic 770, meanwhile, is simply a soft, quiet, easy coupe, and there is nothing wrong with that either.

Design

Bob Hubbach drew it at Chrysler International's Detroit studio and had the shape resolved in under three months. Bryan Smyth's team at Tonsley Park in Adelaide finished it, and Dennis Nicolle handled the VJ facelift. The trick is proportion. The wheelbase is 2,667mm, six inches shorter than the sedan's, while the body stays 1,885mm wide, so the car reads stubby and broad in a way nothing else on an Australian road did. There is no B-pillar. Drop both side windows and the entire flank opens up. The rear three-quarter is the signature: a fastback roof falling into a high blunt tail, a small triangular quarter window, and a thick C-pillar carrying the badge. Chrysler kept adding to that pillar through the series, finishing with the VK's black fibreglass extensions. Colour did a great deal of the talking. Hemi Orange, Vitamin C, Hot Mustard, Magenta and Limelight are Charger colours the way Grabber Blue is a Mustang colour. The VH's rectangular headlights gave way to seven-inch round units on the VJ, which is still the fastest way to date one from twenty paces.

Motorsport pedigree

Chrysler Australia raced the Charger officially for two seasons, 1971 and 1972, and then stopped. It began well. The car won the first race it entered, the Toby Lee 100 at Oran Park, with Doug Chivas driving. Leo Geoghegan, hired to develop it into a touring car, qualified eighth at Bathurst in 1971 and finished seventh outright and second in class. In the 1972 Hardie-Ferodo 500 Chivas brought an E49 home third outright behind Peter Brock's Torana and John French's Falcon GT-HO, and that is the best the car ever managed at Mount Panorama. It was quick enough in a straight line. It could not stop with the Falcons, and brake trouble cost it something like six seconds a lap. Then the 1972 supercar scare took the whole class down, and Chrysler withdrew from Australian touring car racing at the end of that season under new American management. Four VJ cars were built as E49s and that was the end of the R/T. New Zealand reads far better. Chargers were unbeaten in the Benson and Hedges enduro at Pukekohe from 1971 to 1979, Leo Leonard and Jim Little the drivers to know. Allan Moffat, comprehensively beaten there, called the winning car the fastest Charger in the world.

In culture

Hey Charger is the phrase, and it belongs to this car more completely than any Australian advertising line before or since. Chrysler's television campaign put kids and the actor Graeme Blundell on screen throwing a two-fingered V at passing Chargers and shouting it. Within months people were doing it unprompted at traffic lights, which is not something advertising usually achieves. Fifty years on, Australians who have never sat in one still make the gesture. The car arrived at precisely the right moment. Wheels Car of the Year for 1971, a genuine coupe from the company running third in a two-horse race, and a straight six embarrassing V8s. That combination is why the Charger is the Chrysler that Australians remember when the rest of the local range has faded from memory entirely. Beyond Australia and New Zealand it is close to unknown. Nine Six Pack cars went to Japan, six to other Asian markets and two to Britain, one of those being the only automatic R/T ever built. When a tired 1973 Charger with 315,000km and a swapped-in 318 surfaced on Bring a Trailer in February 2022 it made US$22,000, and the winning bidder was in Australia. Even the rough ones go home.

Rivals

Cars from other manufacturers that competed for the same buyers when new.

Owning One

Why collectors want it

The market splits cleanly and knowing where the line falls is most of the game. At the top sit the Six Pack R/T cars, and above them the E49: 149 built, 21 of those with the A84 Track Pack and its 160-litre twin-filler tank. Those are the cars that trade in the hundreds of thousands and the ones every price report quotes.

Everything else lives somewhere far friendlier. Australian Muscle Car Sales counts 117 verified Charger sales since 2003, from A$35,000 to A$395,000 with an average of A$137,047, and the ordinary 770s sit in the bottom third of that spread while climbing steadily year on year.

The argument for the ordinary car is that it is the same shape. Nothing else looks like a Charger because nothing else was built this way: short, wide, pillarless, with no American parent to be compared against and no European ancestor to be flattered by. It shares almost nothing visually with the sedan it was cut from. A 265 Hemi 770 hands you the entire design for a fraction of E49 money, and the block under the bonnet is the same one that made 302bhp.

Which one to look for

The E49 is the grail and the ranking barely moves after it. Released in June 1972, it paired the 302bhp Six Pack with a Borg-Warner four-speed, and 149 were built. The 21 carrying the A84 Track Pack, with its 160-litre twin-filler tank, are the cars auction houses build catalogues around. Behind it the E38: 280bhp, three-speed only, and the car Chrysler actually raced in 1971. The E37 is the mild Six Pack at 248bhp and 134 cars, and it is the cheapest honest route into a genuine triple-Weber Charger. The VJ carried the same idea forward as the E48. The 770 SE is the odd one and worth understanding. Chrysler imported 336 340ci V8s for a racing programme that was abandoned, then recovered the money by selling the engines in 125 special-edition 770s with a TorqueFlite automatic and a single exhaust. Three colours, a turned-metal dash, and no relation to the R/T at all. After that the specials turn cosmetic. The VJ Sportsman in red and white, the VK White Knight Special in half white and half red, and the CL Drifter are paint and trim packages on ordinary Chargers. They are priced accordingly, they are getting harder to find, and they are good fun on their own terms.

Charger · 1971–1973

The entry car, and the reason the whole range worked. A 215ci Hemi six, a three-speed manual and A$2,795 at launch put the shape within reach of buyers who were never going to see an R/T, which is how a two-door ended up outselling the sedan it was cut from. VH only; the plain Charger badge did not survive into the VJ.

Charger 770 · 1971–1978

The volume car, and the one you will actually find. Launched with the 265ci Hemi six at 203bhp and a three-speed automatic for A$3,625, or the 318ci V8 for A$4,105. It is the only Charger offered in all four series and the only one left by the CL, when the choice narrowed to a 4.3 six or a 5.2 V8. Every engine option that was not an R/T hung off this model.

Charger 770 E48 Six Pack · 1973–1975

The Six Pack carried into the VJ, in street tune. Essentially the E37 engine at 248bhp, now behind a four-speed manual and sold as an option on the 770 rather than as an R/T. It is the last triple-Weber Charger of any kind: the VK dropped the option entirely and left only the plain 4.3 six.

Charger 770 SE (E55) · 1972–1973

The accidental special. Chrysler imported 336 340ci four-barrel V8s to homologate an R/T V8 that its own testing then killed, and recovered the outlay by selling the engines in a Special Edition 770: 275bhp, a TorqueFlite 727 automatic, a single-pipe exhaust and seven-inch alloys. Vintage Red, Limelight or Sunfire only, with black and white vinyl trim and a turned-metal dash facia. Fast in a straight line, and no relation to the R/T whatsoever.

Charger R/T · 1971–1973

Road and Track: the performance model, and the only Charger built with racing in mind. The base R/T ran the 265ci Hemi at 218bhp with a three-speed manual, a 3.23 final drive against 2.92 elsewhere in the range, six-inch rims, a front anti-roll bar, a tachometer and an oil pressure gauge, for A$3,395. Every E-code below is an option pack bolted on top of this car, not a separate model.

Charger Sportsman · 1974

Option A23, released August 1974 on the Charger XL. Vintage Red and white outside, black and white cloth inside, the standard 265ci six and a four-speed manual. Cosmetic rather than quick, and the first of the three run-out specials that carried the Charger through its last four years once the R/T was gone.

Charger XL · 1971–1976

One step up. The 245ci Hemi six as standard, better trim, A$3,195 in 1971. It ran through the VH, VJ and VK, and was the base both the Sportsman and the White Knight Special were built on. In the CL the XL survived only as the K16 Police Pursuit Special, with the 318 V8 and an automatic, and was never sold to the public.

Chrysler Charger Drifter · 1977–1978

The last special and the last Charger. A cosmetic pack lifted from the Chrysler Drifter panel van and applied to the CL 770: Spinnaker White under option A34, or Impact Orange, Sundance Yellow or Harvest Gold under A49. The 4.3 six or the 5.2 V8, four-speed manual only. A cheerful way to finish, given what the range had started as.

Chrysler Charger White Knight Special · 1976

Option A50, from July 1976, and by now badged Chrysler rather than Valiant. A cosmetic package on the XL with a front spoiler, bumpers and grille painted body colour, and white vinyl trim picked out in red. Half the run was Arctic White and half Amarante Red. The 4.3 six, manual or automatic.

R/T E37 Six Pack · 1971–1972

The first Six Pack and the cheapest genuine one. Three sidedraught Weber 45 DCOE carburettors on the 265, 248bhp at 4,800rpm and 305lb-ft at 3,400 on 9.7:1 compression, three-speed manual. Blocks were hand-picked, the crank got a high-mass damper to cope with torsional vibration, and the main bearings ran full-circle oil grooves. This engine was the basis of Chrysler's 1971 touring car.

R/T E38 Six Pack · 1971–1972

The one Chrysler actually raced in 1971. Same triple Webers, taken to 280bhp at 5,000rpm and 310lb-ft at 3,700 on 10.0:1 compression, with selected blocks, deeper main bearing caps on longer bolts, and a shot-peened crank and rods. Three-speed manual only. It ran a 14.8-second standing quarter with one gear change and 0 to 60mph in 6.3 seconds, which put it alongside a 351 Falcon GT-HO.

R/T E49 Six Pack · 1972–1973

The grail, and the reason the model has a reputation outside Australia at all. 302bhp at 5,600rpm and 320lb-ft at 4,100, and the first Charger with four speeds, a locally developed Borg-Warner box. Internally close to the E38 but with revised piston clearances and a molybdenum-filled top ring. Wheels timed it at 6.1 seconds to 60mph, 14.1 to 100mph and 14.4 through the quarter, the fastest-accelerating car Australia had built. It cost A$3,975, exactly the same as an E38.

What owning one is like

The engines are the easy part. Both the Hemi six and the American LA V8s are long-lived to the point of being boring about it, and 300,000km before anything serious is a normal expectation rather than a boast. What you get instead is oil weeping from most joints and timing chain rattle on a tired six, and neither is an event. Heavy doors droop on worn hinges, though hinge repair kits are made and fitting them is an afternoon. The windscreen seals leak, and what they leak into is the scuttle and then the floor, so a damp carpet is a body problem wearing a trim disguise. The real question is the shell, and it is worth being straight about it. Chargers were cheap secondhand cars for two decades and were used accordingly, so the survivor pool leans towards cars already repaired once. A 1990s restoration now failing again is the expensive scenario, because the second pass means fabricating panels rather than buying them. Against all that, it is a genuinely simple car. Torsion bars at the front, a leaf-sprung live axle at the back, nothing electronic worth the name, and two Charger-specific clubs full of people who have already done whatever you are about to do.

Upkeep & parts

Mechanically this is one of the cheaper Australian classics to keep on the road. The Hemi six is an Australian-only engine but it was built in enormous numbers across Valiants, Pacers, Chargers and Centuras, so bearings, gaskets, water pumps and rebuild kits are ordinary shelf stock. The 318 and 340 are American LA-series V8s, which means the rest of the world supplies them. TorqueFlite automatics and Borg-Warner four-speeds are both thoroughly understood.

Body and trim is where the budget goes. Floor pans, boot floors, glass, rubbers and lens sets are reproduced. Outer panels, brightwork and Charger-specific interior parts largely are not, and prices reflect the scarcity rather than the complexity.

Two clubs are dedicated to this car specifically, the Charger Club of Victoria and the Charger Club of WA, and the WA club keeps a useful public archive of period road tests and model production data. For build data, Valiant Infobase holds Chrysler Australia's own factory records and decodes a car's CAL card for a modest fee. For reading, Gavin Farmer and Gary Bridger's Hey Charger is the reference work on the model, and Farmer's Great Ideas in Motion covers Chrysler Australia as a whole.