Indeed, car shoppers looking for a bargain can potentially find fleet gold at surplus auctions, where municipal, county, state, and federal agencies dispose of (usually) lightly used domestic cars and trucks. Knowing how those agencies use their vehicles can make or break the value of your find; buying an ex-Border Patrol Raptor in Texas may not be the best idea if you want a long-lived, trouble free truck.
A keen eye and a bit of luck, however, can yield a magnificent treasure. In 1979, a high-school shop teacher spotted this old Plymouth up for bid, and took it home for a measly $500. It’s no ordinary Plymouth, of course — it’s the legendary Superbird, with the NASCAR-ready homologation wing and aero nose.
It’s up for auction again in October, though it’ll cross the stage under bright lights and TV cameras at the glitzy Barrett-Jackson auction in Las Vegas instead of a dreary government service facility. As these rare ‘Birds tend to trade for well over six figures, we’d have to say this is likely the best surplus find yet.
However, the story behind this example might make it worth even more: This particular Superbird was owned by the Environmental Protection Agency.
As sage muscle car guru Steve Magnante tells it on Barrett-Jackson’s site, the EPA needed a way to test the emissions of jet airliners, and the method they determined was to load up a car with sensors and testing equipment, then drag race the airplanes as they hustled down the runway. However, no normal car would suffice, so the EPA contracted Nichels Engineering of NASCAR fame to butch up this already lean muscle car.
As the low nose and high wing of the Superbird was designed to improve downforce and stability around Daytona’s oval, the same features kept the car planted in the jetwash of the big airplanes. The tall wing also provided an ideal platform for air sampling away from the turbulence generated by the body of the car.
Nearly 40 years after being saved from the scrap heap, this 440-powered 1970 Plymouth Superbird has been restored to look just as it did when taxiing with the jets, with all its EPA equipment included. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a truly unique piece of Mopar — and government — history.
[Images: Barrett-Jackson]
Would anyone here actually wish to be seen on the road in that Superbird today?
I remember the first one seen locally around 1970-ish. Goofy from the get-go.
I’d imagine the ownership profile is similar to those of:
SSR
Prowler
C5 Corvette
Purp Drank Impala SS
Yeah, those were gross but there’s still a very special “Mechanix Illustrated’s Cars of the Future!” camp about the ‘Bird.
Remember, the vast majority of these things didn’t even survive their first week on the road and as such are EXTREMELY rare. This thing is a real find indeed, especially because it has a known history behind it.
“it has a known history behind it”
So does typhoid. Wash your hands.
I don’t care about the history. I’d still drive it if it was full of rust and primer.
Would daily drive a Superbird.
Me too. My favorite car as a kid.
Yeah, and everyone that saw you would wonder what the [email protected] you had those sensors on your car for.
I have one word for you:
chemtrails.
Sure, I’d be seen in one…on my way to the auction house, where I’d sell it for enough money to buy a house with. That car’s a rolling IRA.
The Charger Daytona looked much nicer, not having the vinyl roof.
This Superbird example is missing the headlight paint detail and Roadrunner decals, which break up the atrociously long hoodline nicely. The lack of detail, along with the paint, really makes this thing look like an aircraft fuselage.
The 1969 through 1973 full size Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth cars were actually called the fuselage design, to differentiate them from the previous boxy styling. That term wasn’t supposed to be extended to the mid-size B bodies, but you’re right, the nose cone shows how streamlined the mid-sized Plymouth was, compared to the earlier boxy B-body design. Even the A-body Valiant and Dart of that period had more swoop, so the term should have been applied to the whole Chrysler Corp. line.
Saw one going around Lake Tahoe a couple summers ago. the driver was wearing his King Richard style hat and had the ‘stache to go with it. I would flat LOVE to take one to a track day. Sure you’d be slow. Who cares? I’d probably injure my face smiling too hard.
This is VERY cool. I like that it’s been restored to original function. The full center console was an optional extra, wasn’t it?
Also, for people who lived it – were these uncool junk by the ’80s, or were they always a collectors item?
They were always a cool collectors item if you were into the Mopar scene. Which means that they were probably uncool in the greater scheme of things.
I can’t imagine this car ever being uncool.
I think that when it was new and they built one Superbird for every Plymouth dealer, 1,920 in total, there were more than there were people who wanted one and could afford to purchase and insure one. The oversupply surely made them seem less desirable. Once people got into the fake luxury of the brougham era, all bets were off. People’s tastes were as perverted by Monte Carlos, Cutlass Supremes, and Coupe DeVilles as they are today by Chinese-market-driven BMWs and Nissan-based Mercedes. Exactly the same kind of people too.
In the late seventies a man in town was using a Mopar wing car to haul plywood for his DIY home improvement project. The wing provided good support and tie-down point for the plywood.
Priceless. Like the car had by then become.
That reminded me there, I saw a picture of a very nice 300SL – that a guy was using to haul wood.
http://forums.190slgroup.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=26504&d=1438122241
GOOD GRIEF MAN.
At least he had the civic-mindedness to hang a filthy oil rag on the end of the lumber.
Stoned rich kids of the era?
The picture makes me anxious, and I can’t look at it for too long.
Standard interior was bench seat. Buckets optional with or without console. All manuals were floor shift; floor shift auto req console.
So just choosing a manual got you floor shift, buckets, and console? Now you can get floor shift, buckets, and console, but often not manual. what the hurl happened?
They were very rare, even in the 1980’s. I mean, you could see 442’s, GNX’s or Shelby Mustangs in junky condition back then, and buy them in used car lots for peanuts, but never the Superbirds.
I guess they featured the Superbird in the movie Joe Dirt for the outrageousness factor, but I never saw a Superbird in that condition. And I knew quite a few real-life Joe Dirt types.
They were worth around $10K by the mid/late ’80s. That’s what low mileage GT500s and other Muscle Cars at the top food chain were going for. I had the cash, but was lured away by new 5.0 Mustangs starting at that price.
By the late 80’s early 90’s they were the first muscle car to auction in the 6 figures if I remember correctly. But yeah they were tough sells in the 70’s
They were prized by enthusiast collectors, not by “investors” even as late as the late ’80s. Hemi ‘Cudas/Chargers/etc, were still scrapped for the engines. Most everything after the early ’70s sucked, as far as “Muscle Cars” went. Late ’60s muscle cars were loved and respected, but that’s all their ’80s prices reflected.
In Ann Arbor, circa 1982, my older brothers and I befriended a guy that lived right nearby, who owned two 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner Superbirds. One was a Hemi car in orange, the other a 440 car in yellow – both had the pistol grip 4-speed IIRC. The guy said he would sell my oldest brother the 440 car for $10,000. We thought it was just too steep and passed on the deal. I wish we had bought it, but my brother has no regrets – he went and out found a 1971 Dodge Demon GSS (Grand Spaulding) 340 6-Pack car for a steal, and he still owns it to this day.
I’m not going to Ann Arbor, no matter how many times Tim Allen tells me to.
“Dodge Demon” I am having a rare moment – I have zero idea what this car looks like.
Tim Allen is right. You should visit the unique shops and exciting restaurants of downtown Ann Arbor and take a stroll along the picturesque banks of the Huron River. As the weather turns cooler, the leaves change colors, and the excitement of a Saturday football game fills the air, you know you’ve found Pure Michigan.
*Searches furiously through today’s departures on Delta*
CoreyDL:
https://classics.autotrader.com/classic-cars/1971/dodge/demon/100738835
Man that is like new! Course it should be for the asking price. I don’t really fancy it, even with a plaid interior.
The Demon was the Dodge version of the Plymouth Duster. Renamed the Dart Sport for the ’73 model year, so as not to offend the puritans.
I was feeling a bit faint as I read that word.
A simple space and capital M could have fixed it. “It’s a De Mon, mon.”
You know they were going to name it “Beaver” right? Until someone wisely told them what it might mean…
EPA provenance or not, I’m astonished that the Mopar wing cars now ‘tend to trade for well over six figures’. When I was a boy a Plymouth dealer near my aunt’s house had a row of Superbirds displayed in front of the showroom. It was a spellbinding sight for my 7 year old self. Many years later I met the son of the man who owned that dealership. I immediately mentioned the Superbirds. The man rolled his eyes and stated to me that his father cursed the day he ordered those cars. He went on to tell me that it took over a year to sell the cars and the dealership lost money on every one.
Back in the early 90’s as a kid in elementary school I was obsessed with these. At the time they listed just under 6 figures in Hemmings and the Hemi ones over 6 figures. I remember seeing a junk one in a car corral (like joe dirt beat) when I was around 12 that had a 35k asking price on it.
These were hard to move when new. I remember one Chrysler/Plymouth dealer in my home town that had a couple sitting on a remote, unguarded lot well into 1971. Even back in the day I rarely saw one of these or a Daytona version being driven in every day use.
They have become a curiosity item over time and, of course, have seen significantly enhanced value as they are unique and rare.
As I recall, the insurance was astronomical. In ’72, I had a ’68 Mercury Montego MX with a mechanic-installed 351 4bbl, but it was a 4-door sedan. My cousin owned a ’70 Charger with the 383 and 4-speed, and he paid more than twice the insurance I did. Imagine a Superbee with the 440 engine and the wing. Not to mention you could get tickets for every little infraction because cops followed you everywhere. That wing really stuck out in traffic.
Best government auction I heard of was a handful of Polo TDIs that were declared surplus in Thule and shipped to the US for disposal.
I would totally buy a surplus Border Patrol Raptor.
Every time I see the sport instrument console from a 68-70 B-body I cringe. I get a visceral reaction as I fought like hell with the one on my first car, a ’69 charger. I never got it to work properly. I particularly hated the ammeter which wasn’t a shunt type meaning that it was the conduit for all the electrons passing through the car. Then there’s the headlight switch. The headlight doors tended to push the wires against a sheet metal edge which caused a short that damaged the headlight switch which was an engineering abomination, being both electrical and vacuum to power the headlight-door motors. Don’t get me wrong, I love those old Mopars but, wow, were the electrical systems a nightmare. Everyone who owned one kept a spare voltage regulator and ballast resistor in the glove box because they were likely to fail at any moment.
As such it’s really comical to see the astronomical prices that rare Mopars command.
I thought these old classics were the “good ole days” when there weren’t electrical faults to worry about!
Well Ballast resistors were an issue on Mopars for 30 years or more. Just keep a few in the glovebox less then 1 minute repair.
When I worked at an auto parts store in the ’80s, we sold quite a few ballast resistors. I didn’t even know what they were before I started working there. The customers were pretty ticked off when they finally figured out that their cars wouldn’t run because of that little coil of wire.
I had a ’70 Charger, and never did get the headlight doors to work properly. They’d go up OK, but to get them down I’d have to unplug the motor and twist the knob at the bottom to get them down. Of course, the car was 30 years old at the time.
This is the character “Strip The King Weathers” in Pixar’s movie Cars.
I’d bid on a GI Raptor, La Migra edition. How “unreliable” can they get? And who cares? It’s just an F-150. They’re maintained by the “book” too. Plenty of old ’80s Border Patrol Broncos still running around.
I bought an ex-US Forestry F-350 4X4 crew cab (srw) at a gov auction, and although every body panel had minor to moderate damage, the truck was rock solid reliable. They’re not going to have them break down in the middle of the forest. Same with Raptors in the desert.
You know, I really felt sorry for whomever bought that two-year-old F-150 Crew Cab my Air Force squadron had to give up. If you know how the military buys their vehicles, they budget a very exact amount of money for maintenance and once that vehicle uses that amount up, it’s sent out for surplus and replaced. The F-150 was very low mileage 4×4 while we still had a 20-year-old Chevy step van 4×4 still going strong. When it snowed at our field, the step van was always the one we called for as the F-150 got stuck more often than not.
I’m with Danny (The Count) on this one. A Superbird would be a prized member of my fictional, ‘hey I won the lottery” dream garage. The ultimate pre-oil crises, pre-pollution control, Detroit muscle car.
Surprisingly I saw one of these winged warriors on my way home last night. I was coming up to a 4 way stop not too far from home and what do I see up ahead at the cross street but a Hemi Orange aero nose. I was still a fair bit back from the stop so by the time I got close he was making his turn and showing me his tail feathers. Now it certainly is possible it was a tribute car. One thing it was getting dark and every other car on the road had his lights on but this didn’t have the lights up. So I don’t know if that translates to a repo nose that isn’t set up to open, a survivor that is broken, or someone who just didn’t turn on his lights yet because the tail lights were not on either.
Either way it was not what I was expecting to see running down the road.
In HS there was a guy that lived down the street just across from the school and I’d occasionally see it on the road. It had the full livery package that by the early 80’s had almost been washed off, and of course today would be highly prized by some for its patina of being daily driven and frequently washed.
When I was in university (over 30 years ago) I could have bought a Superbird for the princely sum of $25,000. At the time I couldn’t afford it but just a few years later I spent almost as much for a 3 series BMW. If I had the funds that ‘bird would still be in my garage today.