Thursday, June 11, 2009

1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird

1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird for sale in Oregon. Factory base price $4,298, 117 inch wheelbase, 104 MPH in the quarter mile. The final volley in the battle of muscle car aerodynamics was the '70 Superbird. With a 7.0 liter engine limit competing automakers turned to wind cheating body designs like the "winged warriors" Chrysler '69 Dodge Daytona and '70 Superbird. Designed for NASCAR superspeedways, these Mopars both featured a long peaked noise and a rear deck airfoil mounted on struts. NASCAR's 1969 rules called for 500 copies of a model to be built to make it race legal. For 1970 the rule was one car per dealer. 1,971 Superbirds were built.

The most popular engine was the 440 cubic inch Super Commando V-8 with a four barrel carburetor. A total of 1,120 Superbirds came this way. Amother 716 cars were equiped with the 440 Six-Pack. That leaves 135 Himi Birds, 77 with automatics and 58 with four speed transmission.

Raccars used the Race Hemi and the combo was enough to lure Richard Petty back to racing Plymouth after a year with ford. Petty Engineering hired Pete Hamilton to run a second Superbird at selected events in 1970 and he promply won the Daytona 500.