Car of the Week: 1968 Dodge Super Bee Hemi
His grandpa was a Chevy man but his heart was always with MoPar. One man and his 1968 Dodge Super Bee Hemi.
Images courtesy of owner
With a grandfather who was a die-hard Chevy guy, you’d think Joe Sokola’s automotive passion would be for the bow-tie brand. Not so. Instead, he fell hard for Mother MoPar, and he remembers exactly how it happened.
“My grandfather was a collector, but he had ’20s and ’30s Chevrolets, and they’re still around,” Sokola says. “So I grew up ‘Chevy,’ but for some reason, I went to the Dodges and Plymouths.”
To explain the reason Sokola went sweet on “MoPar,” he shuffles back to his childhood memories and describes the driveway next door.
“When we were kids, the neighbor’s [mom] had a Coronet four-door, and she used to drive us to school in it,” he says. “In the late 1970s, you didn’t see so much of them anymore, because they were so rough.”
If the neighbor’s surprisingly well-preserved Coronet didn’t absolutely solidify Sokola’s passion for midsize B-body MoPars, a schoolmate’s 383-powered Super Bee completed the obsession.
“A friend had a dark-green Super Bee, and he’d pick me up in it, and that car was over the top,” Sokola says. “His was a ’68. The thing was shot and he ended up banging it up. It was rough, and he drove it a year and he taught me how to drive a four-speed with that car."
“His name was Kris Simmons; the Simmons family were all MoPar people. When my friend showed up with the Coronet Super Bee in the late 1970s, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ I have been hooked on them ever since. Since then, I bought them, fixed them up, sold them and tried to move up in the collector car world.”
Today, Sokola has a 1968 Super Bee of his own — a Hemi version, no less — but it was a long time coming, and he wasn’t necessarily looking for a Super Bee when he landed his dream car. He started at the entry point of the B-body collecting world with the ultimate goal of one day landing a Hemi-powered version, but he had to slowly move up to one of those coveted and valuable examples of a B-body powered by the ultimate MoPar powerplant.
Climbing the B-body ladder
A couple years after Sokola received his driver’s license, he landed his first MoPar B-body — Chrysler Corp.’s name for its mid-size passenger car platform. He says that B-body 1965 Coronet was a “plain Jane” with a 318-cid V-8 purchased in 1981 for $500. Although not the fastest-flying version of the Coronet, it was a good start and fit in with the company he kept.
“The Simmons family were big MoPar people,” Sokola recalled. “They’d go to Connecticut Dragway every weekend back then. They had a lot of nice stuff — Challengers, Super Bees, big-block Darts — and I kind of looked up to them. I was kind of part of their crew with the car stuff.”
With high-performance Dodges and Plymouths swarming around him, Sokola’s lust for a high-performance MoPar only grew. By the 2000s, he had bought and sold his way up to a wicked B7 Blue 1969 Dodge Charger R/T with a 440 Magnum. It was a great B-body MoPar, but it still wasn’t a Hemi car.
“I was looking for a real factory Hemi car, and so I sold my 1969 Charger R/T and was saving money to move up to a factory Hemi car.”
Sokola soon learned the available factory Hemi cars were rougher than what he was looking for, or out of the price range of guys like him — working stiffs with kids in college and a mortgage. That didn’t stop him from chasing Hemis, and he drove from his Connecticut home to North Carolina in order to sniff out a black ’66 Coronet Hemi car in his price range, but it turned out to be a dud.
“The ’66 and ’67 [Hemi cars], they’re kind of the lowest-price Hemis, and then [prices] jump up in ’68, ’69, ’70. Then they jump up again in ’71,” Sokola says.
Dodge hatches the Super Bee
Then as now, there is a clear line of delineation between Hemi car prices from the 1966-1967 generation of B-body MoPar to the restyled 1968-’70 B-body MoPars. Today, Hemi 1966 and ’67 Dodge Chargers generally top out around $70,000, with Hemi Dodge Coronet hardtops and their Plymouth Belvedere hardtop counterparts selling around the same prices. Meanwhile, the restyled 1968-’70 Hemi B-body Dodges and Plymouths usually sell for about two to three times the price of Hemi cars of the previous generation.
The price discrepancy is likely due to the excitement Mother MoPar brought to the scene for 1968. That model year, Chrysler Corp. injected a fresh excitement into its performance line with budget muscle cars based on its restyled B-body platform that undercut the price of the Pontiac GTO. At Plymouth, there came the new Road Runner, a Belvedere-based model available with decals of Warner Brothers’ famously speedy Road Runner cartoon character and a decal on the air cleaner of his nemesis, Wile E. Coyote. There was even a “Beep-Beep!” horn under the hood and a special Road Runner-only variation of the 383-cid V-8 with an exclusive 335 hp built using the heads, cam, intake manifold and valve gear of the 440-cid V-8 that was standard in its costlier Plymouth GTX counterpart. The Road Runner’s appeal to young drivers wasn’t just the cartoon shtick and unique V-8 — the factory price was a relatively affordable $2,870 to $3,034, depending on whether the buyer chose the Road Runner two-door sedan or spendier hardtop.
Before Road Runner came on the scene, Plymouth had been relying on its handsome GTX to give it street cred. The GTX was a high-trimmed version of the Belvedere with a hot 440-cid V-8 as standard equipment or the 426-cid Hemi V-8 as optional. With its standard 440 and luxury features, the 1968 GTX’s $3,300 base price limited the number of performance-minded young men and women who could afford it. Sure, they could instead buy a stripped-down base Belvedere optioned with a big-block instead of buying a loaded GTX, but a Belvedere’s look generally didn’t match the excitement available under its hood. That, and the price of speccing out a base Belvedere with a hyper-expensive Hemi engine put a performance Plymouth B-body out of reach for most young buyers.
Chrysler Corp. outlined parallel paths for Dodge and Plymouth cars during the late 1960s, and for nearly every model and option, there was a counterpart at the other division. With Plymouth launching its Road Runner for 1968, it’s no surprise that Dodge followed shortly after the start of the selling season with a budget B-body muscle car on its likewise restyled 1968 Coronet line. Dodge would crown its econo muscle car the “Super Bee,” a less juvenile yet still youthful name, and place it beneath its Coronet R/T counterpart to the Plymouth GTX. The Super Bee would also be placed beneath Dodge’s B-body Charger which also had the new Coke bottle-shaped styling, but had its own semi-fastback roofline. (Meanwhile, the Coronet and Belvedere shared a glasshouse.)
Just as Plymouth kept down the Road Runner’s price by basing it upon the base Belvedere, Dodge based the Super Bee upon the Coronet 440 — it’s second-step-from-the-bottom midsize model — and stripped most of the Coronet 440 body trim. It then built up the Super Bee with performance that could be seen and felt. The 335-hp 383 once unique to the Road Runner became standard in the Super Bee, and a Super Bee decal was applied to the rear of each quarter panel. Super Bees also received a unique hood with a “power bulge;” a “distinctive ‘Scat Pack’” performance grille that had a blacked-out mesh center; a Rallye instrument cluster from the Charger; heavy-duty shocks, brakes and suspension; wide-tread redline tires; and a standard four-speed manual transmission. Whereas the Road Runner could be had as a coupe or hardtop, the Super Bee was offered only as a coupe in ’68. Since Dodge was a step up from Plymouth in the Chrysler Corp. hierarchy, the Super Bee coupe was base-priced at $3,027, putting it about $150 more than a Road Runner coupe, and $7 less than the price of a Road Runner hardtop.
On Jan. 2, 1968, Chrysler Corp. announced the Super Bee’s launch to Dodge dealers in a letter that noted production would begin on Jan. 12 with the model’s announcement to the public to be followed on Feb. 14 (Valentine’s Day). The letter was followed by a special brochure to dealers that showed them all there was to love about the new Super Bee:
“Meet the Super Bee. Newest member of the Dodge Scat Pack,” began the brochure. “It’s the performance version of the Coronet 440 2-door coupe. A new way for you to capture and cash in on the profitable youth ‘performance’ market. (500,000 strong.)
“The Super Bee was designed specifically for a large portion of that market. It’s the super car for the guy who doesn’t want to shy away from GTO’s…only their high prices.
“Super Bee’s for the guy who wants a low-priced performance car that he can drive daily…but still take to the track on weekends. One that commands respect when the Christmas tree lights up.
“The Super Bee’s the car he’s been looking for. It’s a gutsy road car with all the goodies to make it a true performance car. If your customer doesn’t believe it, tell him you’ll meet him with a Super Bee at the local drag strip.”
Although the newest member of the “Scat Pack” — Dodge’s hive of performance cars that included the R/T Charger and Coronet — the Super Bee best made use of the Scat Pack performance car marketing. The Scat Pack’s mascot was a helmeted bumblebee with drag slicks for feet and a smoking engine with headers on his back. Dodge put its colony of performance cars into its Scat Pack and made it easy to identify them; they were “the cars with Bumblebee stripes,” it said.
A Hemi all his own
Ironically, not all Super Bees received the Scat Pack Bumblebee stripes, and the Super Bee that Sokola finally caught in his Hemi car search was among those without stripes. His years of hanging out with fellow MoPar fans led him to the nearby Hemi Super Bee, and he admits the recession helped him eventually put a Hemi in his garage.
“In ’07, ’08, ’09, they were paying big money for [Hemi cars],” Sokola recalls, “and then the bottom dropped out. I bought it during the slump, but it needed help.”
The Hemi that Sokola found in 2010 came to him by word of mouth from northeastern Hemi guru Joe Sica, who told him the long-parked 1968 Hemi Super Bee might be for sale.
“It kind of fell in my lap,” Sokola says. “I knew of the car, but there wasn’t any thought of it being for sale.”
Other MoPar collectors knew of the Super Bee as well, as it was a pretty storied machine in the area. The car wasn’t known for exploits on the track, but for simply being a Hemi car that was once regularly seen.
“It was [originally] bought as a daily driver in the Vernon, Connecticut, area, which makes sense, because it was bought at Chorches Motors in the next town over (Manchester, Conn.),” Sokola says.
The Hemi Super Bee came with a dealer emblem for Chorches Motors and he eventually spoke to Sam Chorches, whose father operated the dealership from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s.
“Sam explained to me that his father was big on selling Darts, Coronets, Monacos — four-doors, two-doors and stations wagons,” Sokola said. “But Sam’s father was big and he loved selling Dodge pickup trucks. His father hated these [performance] cars, because he was into pickups, four-doors — they sold trouble-free — and the Hemi stuff was nothing but a headache.”
Sam Chorches was serving in Vietnam when the Hemi Super Bee was ordered from his father’s dealership, but he confirmed to Sokola that all Hemi cars back then were, indeed, ordered. Due to the expense and power of the Hemi engine ($714.30 in a 1968 Super Bee), dealers always ordered Hemi cars, and almost always for a specific customer.
On paper, it looks like Sokola’s relatively stripped Super Bee was ordered for the drag strip rather than the street. In addition to the optional J-code Hemi and the Hemi-specific four-speed, the Super Bee only touts an AM radio and tinted glass as options. The rear axle is the standard unit for a four-speed Hemi: the Dana 60 with 3.54:1 gears. The original owner didn’t even specify the Bumblebee tail stripe for his Super Bee!
Sokola has tracked the car through all of its past owners and believes the original owner sold the car in the early 1970s. Then it bounced from owner to owner until 1983, when it spun a bearing. At that point, the grounded Hemi Super Bee was advertised for $1,400, but there were no takers. Six months later, the car sold for $1,000.
Over the next few decades, the two owners previous to Sokola began restoring the car. They completed restoration of the body, interior and most of the mechanical components. Sokola estimates they were 80 percent done with the restoration when he negotiated its purchase.
“It ran rough, and it didn’t want to run right,” Sokola says.
However, the body work really impressed him and the price was in his range, so he sealed the deal.
Once getting it home in 2010, Sokola began the busy work of putting Super Bee back on the road and as Dodge originally built it. As funds allowed, he sourced a correct original radiator and 15-inch wheels to replace the “Dukes of Hazzard” mags on the car. He also installed a wiring harness, went through the brakes again and had the car’s original carburetors rebuilt. As with anything related to Hemis, the parts were expensive, he says, but rebuilding the Hemi engine was the biggest blow to his pocketbook. However, Sokola says the engine rebuild was worth it since it was done by Bill Atwood, an experienced and respected builder who knows Hemis inside and out. Since getting the Hemi Super Bee back on the road in 2013, Sokola has put thousands of trouble-free miles on the Super Bee.
The 440 Magnum-powered 1969 Charger R/T that Sokola sold to buy the Hemi Super Bee is a pretty choice car. Was it worth selling the Charger for the Hemi experience?
“Without a doubt, yes,” Sokola says. “It runs good, and I like it. I am happy now, but for a while, the sorting out was driving me nuts. But I finally got it. I finally feel like I am not going to get stuck anywhere. But at first I thought, ‘What did I get myself into?’ Then I got over the hump and prevailed and was able to move on.”
And move he does. Now that it’s one honey of a Super Bee, Sokola drives the Hemi car to events around his Connecticut home, even in neighboring states. He’s added power steering, so “instead of fighting the wheel and fighting the stick, I am glad to be just fighting the stick,” he says. He’s also added the dual Bumblebee stripes to the Super Bee, giving it the proper look that many associate with the model.
Sokola says at shows, people either walk right by his Super Bee or it creates enough buzz that it’s awarded best-of-show honors. Either way, it doesn’t matter to him. He finally has his Hemi B-body and he’s enjoying every minute behind its wheel.
“I don’t get stupid with it. I take my time and use my head. I am going to be 60 in a couple months — I am not this crazy kid anymore.”
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Angelo Van Bogart is the editor of Old Cars magazine and wrote the column "Hot Wheels Hunting" for Toy Cars & Models magazine for several years. He has authored several books including "Hot Wheels 40 Years," "Hot Wheels Classics: The Redline Era" and "Cadillac: 100 Years of Innovation." His 2023 book "Inside the Duesenberg SSJ" is his latest. He can be reached at avanbogart@aimmedia.com
