Mike Fitzgerald has owned this numbers-matching 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Superbird — 426 Hemi, four-speed, Limelight Green — since 1972, long before Mopar wing cars became six-figure collector pieces. My Car Story with Lou Costabile catches up with Fitzgerald and restorer Mark Sekula at the Belvidere MOPAR Happening to talk through the sixteen-month restoration that brought the car back to showroom condition. Half a century of ownership tends to produce stories worth hearing.
Some restorations take a weekend and a fresh coat of paint. Others take sixteen months, a restorer with a name car people trust, and an owner patient enough to wait nearly half a century after buying the thing in the first place. Mike Fitzgerald has owned this Superbird since 1972, which means he watched muscle cars fall out of favor, come back into fashion, and turn into six-figure collector pieces, all from behind the wheel of the same numbers-matching Hemi car. What Mark Sekula’s shop did to bring it back to showroom condition is the kind of story that only gets told at swap meets, between people who actually understand what “numbers matching” is supposed to mean.
An Owner Who Never Let Go
Fitzgerald bought this car in 1972, near the tail end of the original muscle car era, back when Mopar wing cars were considered strange-looking oddities rather than the six-figure icons they are today. Holding onto a car continuously for more than fifty years, through the decades when nobody wanted these things and prices were a fraction of what they are now, makes Fitzgerald an unusually rare kind of owner — not someone who bought into a hot market, but someone the market eventually caught up to.
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426 Hemi, Numbers Matching, Four-Speed
“Numbers matching” means the engine, transmission, and other major components have been verified as original to that specific car, typically through casting numbers and stamped codes that a knowledgeable restorer or appraiser can trace. That designation matters enormously to serious Mopar collectors, and it matters even more here, paired with a genuine 426 Hemi and a four-speed manual rather than the automatic most buyers actually chose new — a combination that represents about as close to the top of the Superbird hierarchy as a buyer could get in 1970.
Sixteen Months at Magnum Auto Restoration
Mark Sekula’s shop, Magnum Auto Restoration in LaSalle, Illinois, received the car in 2013 and spent sixteen months returning it to its factory Limelight Green and showroom condition. A Superbird restoration carries challenges most muscle cars don’t — the aerodynamic nose cone and towering rear wing are notoriously difficult to source correctly and even harder to finish so the body lines read as factory-original rather than aftermarket, which is exactly the kind of detail work that separates a sixteen-month restoration from a rushed one.
Why Belvidere’s MOPAR Happening Draws Cars Like This
This particular conversation happened at the 25th Annual Belvidere MOPAR Happening swap meet and car show in Belvidere, Illinois — a gathering built specifically around serious Mopar collectors and restorers, the kind of event where an owner and the person who restored his car can stand side by side and walk a stranger through fifty years of ownership in one conversation. Cars like this Superbird are the reason events like that keep drawing a crowd year after year. Half a century, one restoration, and a swap-meet crowd that still stops to listen — that’s a longer and stranger journey than most cars this significant ever get to have, and Fitzgerald lived every year of it firsthand. Restorations like this one aren’t really about the paint or the panel gaps in the end — they’re about making sure a car with a story this good still looks the part the next time somebody asks to hear it. Not every collector car can say that, and it shows the moment Sekula starts pointing out what took sixteen months to get right.
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Awesome
Way cooooooooool.
Nice
Nice
What’s wrong with white interiors?
A stunning beauty!! ❤
love it found out what some of the stuff is really for now I like it even more
cool,especially the white interior.Any one who doesn’t like this is pretty nuts!!!
Very sweet
Nice looking car. White interior is great
Nice car I like it.
Great car
If it’s on the build sheet it’s on the car.
One of these days, get one!
Wow
White interior makes any car pop. Love it!
Great investment!!
That is special
The dream……