Only 674 original miles !! Superbird !!! Original Paint / Unrestored – Road Test TV

A 1970 Plymouth Superbird spent nineteen years sitting before anyone put real miles on it, and it still shows just 674 on the odometer today. The factory B5 blue paint has never been touched by a repaint gun, and the numbers-matching 440 Super Commando under the hood still traces back to the original build sheet. Only 1,920 Superbirds were built for NASCAR homologation, and this one may be among the best-preserved survivors left. Is a car this original meant to be driven, or protected?

Nineteen years is a long time to sit on a car this special without selling it. That’s how long this 1970 Plymouth Superbird reportedly waited on a dealership lot before someone finally drove it home, and even then, barely: it’s covering just 674 original miles today, wearing the same B5 blue paint it left the factory wearing. Superbirds weren’t cheap or common even brand new, Plymouth built only 1,920 of them for one controversial model year, but the real mystery isn’t the rarity, it’s why nobody put real miles on it. Was it too valuable to drive even in 1970? Viewers in the comments can’t stop arguing about whether people should even be allowed to lean against the fenders. So what do you do with a half-century-old muscle car that’s still basically new?

A Wing Car Built for a Rulebook, Not the Street

Plymouth didn’t build the Superbird to win beauty contests. NASCAR forced the issue, cars were topping 190 mph on superspeedways, and Chrysler’s boxy B-body Roadrunners needed aerodynamic help to keep pace with the sleeker Fords and Mercurys of the era. The pointed nose cone and towering rear wing weren’t styling flourishes, they were function first, giving drivers stability at speed through the corners at Daytona and Talladega. To make the car legal for stock car racing, Plymouth had to build and sell a minimum run through dealerships, which is how 1,920 Superbirds ended up on showroom floors in 1970 whether buyers wanted the exaggerated aero or not. This particular car carries its factory 440 cubic inch Super Commando V8, the mid-tier engine option between the base 440 and the 426 Hemi, good for 375 horsepower when new.

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Why B5 Blue Still Looks Wet Fifty-Plus Years Later

Original paint on a fifty-plus-year-old muscle car is rare enough. Original paint that still looks wet under showroom lights is something else entirely. This Superbird has never been repainted, never been color-sanded, never seen a body shop, it’s wearing the same coat of factory B5 blue that rolled off the assembly line. That authenticity is exactly what has viewers arguing in the comments about how the car should be handled at shows. Several called it a museum piece that deserves careful preservation, and more than one pointedly asked why people were allowed to lean against the fenders and door panels while cameras rolled. It’s a fair question, once original paint like this gets chipped or scuffed, that history is gone for good, and no restoration shop can replicate five decades of factory patina.

The 674-Mile Question Nobody Can Answer

What nobody in the video, or the comments beneath it, can fully explain is why this particular Superbird sat unsold and undriven for nineteen years. Wing cars weren’t universally loved when new, some buyers thought the styling was over the top, and by the early 1970s insurance rates and emissions rules were already killing off the segment, which left dealers holding inventory nobody wanted at sticker price. It’s entirely possible this Superbird simply got parked in the back of a showroom, marked down, forgotten, then rediscovered once collectors started chasing wing cars decades later. Whatever kept it off the road worked in the car’s favor. Superbirds that were driven hard through the 1970s and 1980s show far more wear, rust, and modification than this one, which reads today almost like a factory press photo come to life.

A Childhood Memory in Chartreuse Green

One comment on the video stuck out more than the rest: a viewer who remembered the first Superbird he ever saw, parked in his mother’s apartment driveway in the early 1970s, painted in a bright chartreuse green rather than this car’s blue. He said the memory sent him home dreaming about owning one himself, a common thread among Mopar fans of a certain age, for whom the Superbird’s wing and nose weren’t outlandish, they were just what a fast car was supposed to look like growing up. Plymouth offered the Superbird in a handful of eye-catching factory colors beyond this B5 blue, including a loud Lemon Twist yellow-green and an equally bold Vitamin C orange, part of why the car still photographs so differently depending on which surviving example you’re looking at.

1,920 Built, and Not One of Them Cheap Today

Plymouth’s homologation math meant exactly 1,920 Superbirds were built for the 1970 model year, split across several engine and color combinations, and none of them have gotten any easier to find since. Values have climbed hard over the past two decades as Mopar collectors specifically target numbers-matching, unrestored examples like this one, where the paint, interior, and drivetrain all trace back to the factory build sheet. Commenters in the thread wouldn’t put a hard number on what this specific car is worth, but the tone throughout leaned less toward “what’s it worth” and more toward “don’t you dare touch it.” Even builders who normally love reimagining old muscle cars tend to leave real Superbirds alone, because chasing originality on a wing car this well preserved is worth more than any performance upgrade could add.

The Dodge Cousin Nobody Should Forget

It’s easy to forget the Superbird had an older sibling. A year earlier, Dodge released the Charger Daytona in 1969, using a similar nose cone and wing package to chase the same NASCAR aerodynamics. The Daytona and Superbird looked related because they were, both came out of Chrysler’s wind tunnel work and shared much of the same aero hardware, though the Superbird’s nose and wing were reworked to fit the Roadrunner’s different body. Just 503 Daytonas were built compared to the Superbird’s 1,920, which still makes the Dodge the rarer of the two today, even though the Plymouth usually gets more attention. Seeing them side by side makes it obvious how much engineering went into solving one very specific problem, keeping a big American V8 stable at nearly 200 mph on a high-banked oval.

What a Numbers-Matching 440 Actually Means

Under that long hood sits the numbers-matching 440 Super Commando, meaning the engine’s stamped identification still matches the original build sheet and VIN, a detail that matters enormously to serious collectors and can swing a car’s value by tens of thousands of dollars compared to an example with a replacement block. Rated at 375 horsepower and 480 lb-ft of torque when new, the 440 Super Commando was never the quickest option in the Superbird lineup, that honor went to the 426 Hemi, but it was by far the most common engine buyers actually chose, prized for being nearly as strong while costing less to insure and maintain. On a car with only 674 miles, that numbers-matching status isn’t just a footnote, it’s most of the reason this Superbird commands the reverence it gets in the comments section.

Preserve It or Drive It – The Debate Isn’t Settled

Watch enough barn find and low-mile survivor videos and you’ll notice the same argument resurface every time: is a car like this better off parked under a cover, or does keeping it static waste the entire point of building a muscle car in the first place? For this Superbird, the scale tips hard toward preservation. Every mile added chips away at what makes the car worth talking about, the untouched paint, the unworn interior, the sense that you’re looking at 1970 exactly as Plymouth intended it. That doesn’t mean the debate goes away, though. Somewhere out there is an owner who has to decide, every time the garage door opens, whether today is finally the day this Superbird earns a few more of its 674 miles.

See the full video above and join the conversation in the comments.

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