1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird 426 Hemi 4 Speed in Green

Owner Mike Fitzgerald has kept this 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird since 1972, but it took restorer Mark Sekula sixteen months to bring its numbers-matching 426 Hemi and Limelight Green paint back to factory spec. Along the way, the car nearly met a very different fate at the hands of a relative who had no idea what a Hemi Superbird was worth. See what a homologation special built to chase NASCAR wins looks like fifty years later.

Some cars get crushed before anyone realizes what they are. This 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird nearly became one of them — not through neglect, but through a relative who had no idea a numbers-matching 426 Hemi was sitting under that pointed nose cone, and very nearly signed off on sending the car to the scrapper. Owner Mike Fitzgerald has had the car since 1972, watched it sit rough for decades, and then handed it to a restorer who spent sixteen months bringing it back to the exact Limelight Green it wore off the line. What almost happened to this Superbird says something uncomfortable about how many of its sisters never made it this far.

Built to Win NASCAR, Not Car Shows

The Superbird existed for one reason: to lure Richard Petty back to Plymouth and let the brand compete with Ford and Mercury’s aerodynamic NASCAR racers in 1970. Plymouth needed to sell a minimum number of street versions to homologate the car for competition, so roughly two thousand Superbirds left dealerships that year wearing a pointed nose cone and a rear wing tall enough to clear the trunk lid when it opened. Neither piece was styling for its own sake — both were shaped and positioned based on wind tunnel testing meant to keep the car planted at NASCAR speeds. Dealers reportedly struggled to move them at the time, which is part of why so few street Superbirds survived intact into the following decades.

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The Engine Under the Nose Cone

This particular Superbird carries its original numbers-matching 426 Hemi, Chrysler’s dual-quad, hemispherical-combustion-chamber big block that the factory conservatively rated at 425 horsepower. Paired here with a four-speed manual transmission, it’s the combination collectors chase hardest among wing cars, since Chrysler also offered the Superbird with a 440 in single or six-barrel form and an automatic transmission for buyers who wanted less commitment. A numbers-matching Hemi means the engine block currently under that fiberglass nose is the same one the factory installed when the car was built — a detail that gets verified against casting numbers and date codes, and one that separates a car like this from the many Superbirds that have had replacement engines swapped in over fifty years of ownership. Chrysler built the 426 Hemi in relatively small numbers to begin with, since it was primarily a factory-backed racing engine that happened to be available to street buyers willing to pay for it, which is part of why Hemi-optioned cars of any body style command a premium over their small-block or wedge-engine equivalents.

Sixteen Months in LaSalle, Illinois

Restorer Mark Sekula runs Magnum Auto Restoration out of LaSalle, Illinois, and took delivery of this car in 2013 in rough shape after decades of Fitzgerald’s ownership. Bringing it back to showroom condition took sixteen months, including matching the factory Limelight Green paint code exactly rather than approximating a similar shade of green. That kind of precision matters enormously to Mopar judges and collectors, who can spot an off-tone repaint from across a show field. The restoration wasn’t a resto-mod or a reimagining — it was a return to exactly the specification the car left the factory with in 1970, right down to the paint code most casual observers would never think to question.

The Trunk Nobody Expects to Open

One detail viewers picked up on is how rarely people think to check inside a Superbird’s trunk, even though it’s one of the more revealing places to look. Because the rear wing sits above and behind the trunk lid rather than bolted directly to it, the trunk floor and wing support structure can carry date codes, factory stampings, and evidence of prior repair work that help verify a car’s history. For a Hemi Superbird specifically, where value swings enormously based on originality, that unglamorous corner of the car can matter as much as the engine bay. It’s a reminder that the parts of a wing car nobody photographs are often the parts that tell the most complete story.

The Almost-Crushed Superbird

According to the story shared around this video, the car came close to being destroyed by a relative who had no idea what she was looking at — reportedly wanting a Hemi Superbird sent to the crusher, unaware of what the car actually was. It sounds implausible today, but it reflects exactly how these cars were regarded for much of the 1970s and ’80s: unsold, unloved aero cars that dealers had discounted to move and owners eventually parked and forgot. A meaningful share of the roughly two thousand Superbirds built were scrapped, wrecked, or parted out long before collector interest caught up with what they actually were, which is a large part of why survivors like this one now draw so much attention.

What a Numbers-Matching Hemi Bird Is Worth Today

One commenter pegged this car’s value at half a million dollars or better if the numbers genuinely match, and that estimate isn’t far off the mark for the wing car market. Numbers-matching Hemi Superbirds are among the most expensive American muscle cars sold at auction, regularly clearing seven figures for the best-documented examples, while lesser-optioned or non-matching cars trade for a fraction of that. The gap between a Hemi four-speed like this one and a 440 automatic Superbird can be enormous, which is exactly why verifying originality — engine casting numbers, trunk stampings, and factory build sheets — matters so much more here than it would on a more common muscle car. Even small details, like whether the fender tag and broadcast sheet correspond to the VIN, can shift a car’s appraised value by six figures in either direction once it reaches this level of the market.

A Fixture at Belvidere

This video was shot at the 25th Annual Belvidere MOPAR Happening, a swap meet and car show held in Belvidere, Illinois that draws Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth owners from across the Midwest every year. Events like this one are where cars like Fitzgerald’s Superbird get seen up close by people who actually understand what they’re looking at, rather than sitting in a climate-controlled garage between concours appearances. For a car that nearly ended up at the scrapyard, spending a summer afternoon surrounded by fellow Mopar owners who recognize exactly what a numbers-matching Hemi four-speed Superbird represents is about as fitting an outcome as this car could have gotten.

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