1971 Plymouth GTX 440 with a Factory Sun Roof

Owner Kirk Phillips brought his 1971 Plymouth GTX 440 — one of only a handful built with a factory sunroof — to the 24th Annual Belvidere MOPAR Happening, where Lou Costabile caught up with him. The car’s export history and a second fender tag full of rare factory options had commenters cataloguing details down to the exact paint code. Watch the full story behind one of the rarest GTX combinations still on the road.

Most GTX buyers in 1971 never checked the sunroof box — only a handful ever did — and this particular car adds an extra wrinkle even those rare few didn’t share: it was built for export, meaning it spent time overseas before finding its way back to American soil. Owner Kirk Phillips has had the car since 2006, and when Lou Costabile caught up with him at the 24th Annual Belvidere MOPAR Happening in Illinois, the comment section that followed turned into an impromptu deep-dive on exactly what makes a factory sunroof GTX so hard to find.

A Sunroof Almost Nobody Ordered

According to commenters who know the model well, only a handful of 1971 Plymouth GTXs were ever built with the factory manual sunroof option, coded M-31 or M-34 depending on the specific hardware. In a muscle car market where buyers were checking boxes for engine size and stripe packages, a sunroof was a genuinely unusual choice — one that adds a layer of rarity on top of the GTX nameplate itself, which was already nearing the end of its run by 1971.

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Built for Export, Then Brought Home

Owner Kirk Phillips explained that this GTX was originally manufactured for export, meaning it left the factory destined for an overseas market before eventually making its way back to the United States. Phillips bought the car in 2006, after it had already completed that unusual overseas detour — a detail that adds real provenance to a car most buyers would otherwise assume spent its entire life stateside.

Three Engines, One Fender Tag

The comments fill in mechanical specifics the video itself doesn’t dwell on: 1971 GTX buyers could choose between three engine options — the standard 440, the 440 with a six-barrel carburetor setup, and the 426 Hemi at the top of the range. One commenter specifically pointed out that this car carries a second fender tag, a Mopar detail that signals a heavily optioned build, and noted the rocker moldings and hood pins were both factory options rather than standard equipment — details that only show up on cars ordered with real intention rather than base-spec builds.

The Rim-Blow Wheel and Other Hidden Options

Beyond the sunroof, commenters catalogued a surprising list of factory extras on this particular GTX: the distinctive Rim-Blow steering wheel, which let the driver sound the horn by squeezing the wheel’s rim rather than pressing a center pad, along with factory cruise control — an option relatively uncommon on a performance-focused muscle car of this era. One viewer even pinned down the exact paint code, identifying the color as Autumn Bronze Metallic, and noted the hood pins carry their own factory option code, J-54.

The GTX’s Last Stand Before Discontinuation

The 1971 model year marked the final year for the GTX as a standalone model; by 1972, what remained of the nameplate was folded into the Road Runner lineup as a trim option rather than a separate model. That context makes a heavily optioned, sunroof-equipped 1971 GTX like this one something of a closing statement for the model — built during its last year of independent existence, loaded with options that reflect an owner clearly buying the car they wanted rather than settling for a stripped-down muscle car.

What the Fuselage Styling Represented

Commenters singled out the fuselage body styling — Chrysler’s rounded, aerodynamic design language introduced across its full-size and mid-size lines starting in 1969 — and specifically praised the wraparound bumpers that came with it, calling them a signature look of the late-1960s and early-1970s Mopar lineup. That styling shift moved the GTX away from the boxier lines of its mid-1960s predecessors toward something more sculptural, a design direction that split opinion when new but has aged into one of the more distinctive looks of the muscle car era.

A Belvidere Show Built for Exactly This Kind of Car

The 24th Annual Belvidere MOPAR Happening, where this GTX made its appearance, is a swap meet and car show built specifically around Chrysler products, drawing exactly the kind of detail-obsessed Mopar audience capable of identifying a second fender tag or a J-54 hood pin code at a glance. Events like this exist because cars like Phillips’s GTX need an audience that appreciates the difference between a base 440 GTX and one carrying this many factory-documented options.

Why This Specific Combination Rarely Turns Up Twice

Between the export history, the rare sunroof option, the documented fender tag, and the factory extras layered on top of an already scarce final-year GTX, this car represents a combination unlikely to have an exact twin anywhere else. For Mopar collectors, that kind of accumulated rarity — where several independently uncommon choices stack on top of one another — is worth more than any single headline spec, and it’s exactly why a comment section full of knowledgeable Mopar fans spent so much time cataloguing every option code they could identify.

Lou Costabile’s Belvidere Coverage

This GTX is one of many cars Lou Costabile has featured from the Belvidere MOPAR Happening over the years, an annual gathering that has become a reliable source of exactly the kind of deeply optioned, well-documented Mopar survivors that make for compelling episodes. Returning to the same regional show year after year lets Costabile build relationships with owners like Kirk Phillips, the kind of access that produces a detailed, on-camera conversation about export history and factory option codes rather than a quick walk-around shot grabbed in a crowded parking lot.

Belvidere’s Mopar-Only Focus

Unlike general car shows that draw a mix of makes, the Belvidere MOPAR Happening restricts its swap meet and show floor specifically to Chrysler products, a focus that concentrates exactly the kind of parts, knowledge, and buyers a car like this optioned GTX benefits from. Vendors selling reproduction fender tags, date-coded hardware, and factory manuals cater directly to owners chasing this level of documentation, which is part of why a show like this one keeps drawing cars as deeply optioned as Phillips’s GTX back year after year.

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