1969 Mopar Mod Top: Rarer Than the Hemi

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Sunday, 27 Sep 2026 17:00 0 7 autotech

By 1969, Detroit had discovered that subtlety was optional. Horsepower was climbing, paint colors were getting louder, and Chrysler was willing to sell cars in shades that looked radioactive under dealership lights. Then somebody apparently decided ordinary vinyl roofs were getting boring. The resulting factory option embraced the era with flowers, coordinated upholstery, and enough psychedelic color to make even Mopar’s High Impact paint look restrained. Half a century later, only a handful of the grooviest Mopars have survived.

Table of Contents

Everyone Knows The Muscle Cars You’re Supposed To Want

1970 Dodge Coronet Hemi R/T 426 Hemi V8

Mecum

Some Of Chrysler’s Most Unique Cars Got Weird Without Getting Faster

Long before the muscle-car boom, Chrysler Corporation pioneered selling cars to small market segments based on appearance rather than horsepower. The 1955 Dodge La Femme came with unique two-tone pink-and-white paint along with rosebud-pattern upholstery. But that’s not all. The package also included a coordinated purse, rainwear, and an umbrella. The 1956 version swapped to a lavender color scheme.

Many Chrysler Corporation special editions weren’t invented in Detroit; they were the brainchildren of dealerships instead. Take, for example, the 50 1968 Chargers Tom Kneer Dodge ordered in PPG #60326 Tiger Orange, a Michigan government highway fleet color. The dealership created the special-edition “Bengal Charger” to commemorate Cincinnati’s brand-new Bengals football team. The cars all wore black stripes, black vinyl tops, Bengal fender badges, and special floor mats. But engines ranged from big-block V-8s to entry-level Slant Sixes.

Even after the peak of the muscle era, Chrysler Corporation seemed to double down on visual special-edition packages. One of the most famous was the 1974 Dodge Dart Sport Hang 10. Its fold-down rear seat opened up enough space to fit a surfboard. But that’s not all. The seats featured multicolored “swimsuit” upholstery, and the cabin got orange shag carpeting. Outside, the white paint was decked out in red-and-blue graphics ending in curling waves and a tiny surfer. Groovy! But the most psychedelic Mopar of all time hit dealership lots five years earlier.

The Mod Top Was Peak 1969, Right Down To The Upholstery

For the 1969 model year, Mopar debuted the most “Summer of Love” appearance package possible. Instead of another black vinyl roof pretending to be formal wear, Chrysler Corporation went psychedelic. The new “Pop Prints” covered vinyl roofs in flowers so bright, they threatened to outshine Mopar’s soon-famous “High Impact” body colors.

Dodge cut straight to the chase, branding its flower-patterned vinyl roofs as the “Floral Top.” These cars came with solid, non-floral interiors. Plymouth took a slightly different route, branding its floral vinyl tops as the “Mod Top.” Plymouth also offered the same material as an interior décor package, which included patterned seat inserts and door-panel inserts. Buyers could order Plymouths with just floral seats, just the floral top, or a combination of both (pictured).

Moore’s Mopars has been building what may be the internet’s most complete Mod Top/Floral Top registry since 1995. Its research identifies three factory floral patterns: yellow/green/black, blue/green, and green/gold/light blue. These floral Mopars aren’t to be confused with the separate “paisley” patterned cars.

Chrysler Spread Its Flower Power Across An Entire Mopar Lineup

According to Moore’s Mopars, Plymouth built more than 2,000 Mod Tops. The production table lists 1,637 1969 Plymouth Satellites (V1Q, blue/green) and 937 1969 Plymouth Barracudas (V1P, yellow/green/black). For 1970, production was limited to E-body Barracuda/’Cuda applications: 26 blue-pattern Barracudas and 17 blue-pattern ’Cudas (V1Q, blue/green), plus 26 yellow-pattern Barracudas and fewer than 15 yellow-pattern ’Cudas (V1P, yellow/green/black).

Floral Top Dodges were much rarer. The same table lists just 218 for 1969, all using V1H (green/gold/light-blue): 48 LL23 Swinger hardtops, 50 LM23 Swinger 340s, 25 LH23 Dart Customs, 14 LP23 Dart GT hardtops, 16 LS23 Dart GTS hardtops, 8 WM21 Super Bee coupes, 18 WM23 Super Bee hardtops, and 39 WH23 Coronet 440 hardtops.

Dodge didn’t sell any known production Floral Top cars in 1970. But it appears to have considered carrying the option forward. V1H (green/gold/light-blue) was printed in a draft of the 1970 Dodge Color and Trim Book, but was later covered with correction tape in both Challenger and Dart applications. That suggests Dodge considered a 1970 Floral Top, then canceled it before regular production.

Nobody Knows Exactly How Many Floral Mopars Chrysler Built

The aforementioned registry says Mopar built “about 2,876” Mod/Floral cars. That number isn’t lifted from any surviving Chrysler corporate ledger. The registry traces the estimate to the April/May 1994 issue of Mopar Muscle, and it became the figure that enthusiasts repeated. But things get fuzzy fast. Its 1969 entries add up neatly to 2,792 cars, while the known 1970 entries add another 69 before the final yellow ’Cuda line. If that last figure were 15, the table would land exactly on 2,876. Instead, the registry lists it only as “

How many Mod/Floral cars survive today? That number’s even more slippery. Since 1995, the registry has been collecting volunteered information and currently publicly lists 161 cars. That isn’t a full survivor census; unregistered cars certainly exist. But the registry also documents how originality can disappear. One registered car had its original floral top and interior replaced with black trim before being restored with reproduction material decades later. Others have carried cracked original floral vinyl simply because owners were reluctant to remove it. Add ordinary scrappage, and the number of recognizable originals can only get smaller.

By those estimates, Chrysler built fewer Mod/Floral Top cars than Street Hemi cars, and far fewer than the roughly 13,883 Six Pack/Six Barrel cars one production compilation tallies for 1969–1971. Does that mean flower-roofed Mopars are worth more? Not usually, and there are too few comparable sales to calculate a meaningful average package premium. But Steven Juliano’s original 29,000-mile 1969 Barracuda Formula S Mod Top sold for $440,000 at Mecum Indianapolis in May 2019. DodgeGarage reported a $40,000–$50,000 pre-auction estimate, meaning the flowers helped send one already-desirable Barracuda to nearly ten times that estimate. The irony is that while collectors hunted Hemis and Six Packs by their codes, one of Chrysler’s rarest configurations was decked out in flowers the whole time.

Sources: Chevrolet, Mecum Auctions, Dodge Brochures, Hamtramck Registry, Mod/Floral Top Registry, Stellantis, Ultimate Muscle Car production compilation