According to sources, a good portion of the design work for a production version was complete when the Turbine car project was axed. No doubt with some revisions, that styling work was recycled into the 1966 Dodge Charger. However, additional design work had been going on in parallel before the Turbine met its fate.

Chrylser’s first public use of the Charger name was on a concept car shown in 1964. This two-door convertible was intended to showcase the the company’s new 426 cubic-inch HEMI V8 engine. Positive response to the show car led to another concept in 1965 which was very close to the production car released the following year.

For those interested in the deeper details of this process, there is currently a rather unique listing on eBay for what is said to be a design model created at Chrysler later in the Charger’s life cycle. The seller indicates that he bought the model from Engel’s widow a couple of years ago, and that it is a Dodge Charger III design model that Engel spirited away from the company.

The only provenance demonstrated in the eBay listing is a signature by the model maker on the underside of the piece. When asking $50,000 for a historical item, one might rather hope for more. The facility to ask questions of the seller has been disabled in the listing.

Still, the model closely resembles published sketches of the 1969 Charger III concept car and suggests that Chrysler was interested in taking on the C3 Corvette of the day. Many suggest that the design direction shown in this model significantly influenced the styling of the Viper GTS, but we’ll leave that point open to your own critical thinking processes.