A 1970 Plymouth HEMI Superbird and a 1969 Chevrolet ZL1 Camaro both fought their way into the top ten at Barrett-Jackson’s record-breaking $207.6 million 2024 Scottsdale Auction. Fewer than 150 Superbirds were ever built with the HEMI, and the ZL1’s all-aluminum 427 came from Can-Am racing, not the street. Only one of them claimed the top spot. Watch the full countdown to see which one it was.
Auctions are supposed to be about money, but the ones people actually remember come down to a single moment — the instant two once-in-a-generation cars are both still climbing the leaderboard, and only one of them can keep going. At Barrett-Jackson’s record-breaking 2024 Scottsdale sale, that moment belonged to a matchup almost nobody predicted: a winged 1970 Plymouth HEMI Superbird against a razor-sharp 1969 Chevrolet ZL1 Camaro, both fighting for a spot in the same top-ten countdown. One of them walked away with the highest number on the board. The other came agonizingly close, and Barrett-Jackson’s own broadcast makes you sit through nine other sales before it tells you which.
A Record-Setting Weekend in the Desert
The 2024 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Auction didn’t just move a large volume of cars across the block that weekend — it closed out with $207.6 million in total sales, the single highest total in the company’s entire history at that specific point in time. Buried inside that enormous number sits a dedicated top-ten muscle car countdown built from literally hundreds of individual consignments, and simply getting into that top ten at an event of this size means beating out entries that would comfortably headline almost any other, smaller auction on their own.
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Fewer Than 150 — The HEMI Superbird’s Case for the Top Spot
The 1970 Plymouth HEMI Superbird earns its lasting reputation from a towering rear wing and a dramatically elongated nose cone that Plymouth’s engineers designed purely to win NASCAR aerodynamics battles on superspeedways, not to look particularly good sitting on a showroom floor for retail customers. Fewer than 150 Superbirds were ever built with the specific 426 HEMI engine option, and that genuinely small number is exactly what turns an already rare aero-warrior into one of the true unicorns of the entire muscle car era — every single surviving example carries outsized value simply because so comparatively few left the factory configured this exact way.
An All-Aluminum Secret Under the ZL1’s Hood
The 1969 Chevrolet ZL1 Camaro makes an equally improbable case for the top spot in its own right, built as a special dealer-ordered package around an all-aluminum 427 big-block engine that Chevrolet originally engineered specifically for Can-Am road racing competition, not any kind of ordinary street use. Total ZL1 production landed at roughly 69 cars built, making it rarer than nearly anything else General Motors put a VIN number on during that entire decade — an all-aluminum big-block stuffed into a car this genuinely light turned the ZL1 into a true outlier even when compared against other big-block Camaros from the very same model year.
Why the Countdown Format Makes the Suspense Worse
Barrett-Jackson structures its own official top-ten breakdown video as a complete countdown, running methodically through chapters from number ten all the way down to the final top three before ultimately landing on the declared winner, which means anyone specifically watching for the Superbird-versus-ZL1 outcome has to patiently sit through eight other genuinely significant sales first. That structural format is entirely deliberate — it’s exactly what transforms a fairly straightforward auction recap into content people actually watch all the way through rather than simply skipping ahead to the final number.
What the Comment Section Corrected About the ZL1
The comment section underneath Barrett-Jackson’s own official upload includes viewers actively correcting specific details the broadcast itself glossed over, including one particularly detailed commenter who points out that the ZL1’s 427 wasn’t just topped with aluminum cylinder heads — the entire engine block underneath was aluminum as well, a distinction that genuinely matters to serious Camaro purists since a fully aluminum 427 is significantly rarer and considerably lighter than the far more common iron-block big-blocks that most ordinary 1969 Camaros carried.
Boss 429s, Sleeper Camaros, and the Rest of the Top Ten
The Superbird and ZL1 clearly weren’t racing for the top spot in complete isolation that weekend — the same top-ten countdown also includes a Boss 429 Mustang drawing its own genuinely devoted comment-section following, plus enough additional factory big-block and homologation specials scattered throughout that one viewer simply commented picking an entirely different car altogether as their own personal favorite of the whole bunch, underscoring just how genuinely deep this particular sale’s overall muscle car lineup actually ran.
Why This Result Becomes a Reference Point for Years
Results like this one function as a genuine pricing signal for the entire broader collector car hobby — when a Superbird and a ZL1 both land comfortably in the top ten of a record-setting sale on the same weekend, it tells appraisers and serious buyers alike exactly where the current ceiling sits for both aero cars and factory big-block specials alike, and a specific result like the 2024 Scottsdale countdown becomes the exact number people cite for years afterward whenever valuing a genuinely comparable car.
What Barrett-Jackson’s Own Data Says About Where This Market Is Headed
Barrett-Jackson’s own published sales data from this specific event suggests the broader muscle car market isn’t simply rewarding raw rarity in isolation anymore — documentation quality, verified originality, and matching-numbers status increasingly separate two equally rare cars at auction, which is exactly why a Superbird and a ZL1 can both legitimately compete for the same top spot on paper while ultimately landing in very different places once the actual bidding starts.
What It Would Take for Either Car to Beat the Other Next Time
Because Barrett-Jackson runs multiple major sales throughout the year across different cities, a Superbird or ZL1 falling just short of the top spot in Scottsdale doesn’t necessarily settle the broader question permanently — condition, documentation, and which specific bidders show up in the room on a given day can shift results meaningfully from one auction to the next. Collectors tracking both nameplates closely tend to watch results across several consecutive sales rather than treating any single countdown as the final word, since a car that lands second in one record-setting weekend can just as easily claim the top spot at the next major event if the right combination of documentation and interested bidders happens to align.
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