Up Close With an Authentic Plymouth Superbird

Ramo Stott’s #7 Superbird won four races across ARCA, USAC, and NASCAR-adjacent competition in the early 1970s, and current owner Doug Schellinger has spent years turning its scars into documented history, down to a rear window that Stott himself deformed with a blowtorch to pass tech inspection. Every ding, weld, and mismatched panel on this car has a story and, often, a photograph to back it up. Read on to find out how a blown engine and a stubborn NASCAR inspector shaped one of the most authenticated winged cars left on the road.

Most race cars that survive into collector hands have been restored into something better than they ever were on track, repainted, refreshed, sanitized for the show circuit. This Plymouth Superbird went the opposite direction. Its current owner has spent years proving, detail by detail, exactly how imperfect it really is, and that imperfection is precisely what makes it one of the most authenticated winged cars left in existence. Even the flaws have paperwork. The strangest proof of all isn’t in a file folder, it’s baked into the rear window glass itself. That kind of forensic-level documentation is rare even among cars with famous names attached to them.

A Superbird Built to Satisfy NASCAR, Not Collectors

Plymouth Superbirds and Dodge Charger Daytonas were never built for buyers chasing prestige, they existed purely to satisfy NASCAR, USAC, and ARCA homologation rules that required a minimum number of street cars before a design could race. Many were later rebodied as model years changed, and plenty more were simply scrapped once they’d been worn out or replaced by newer race equipment. Survivors are rare enough that any documented example draws serious attention, and this one, the Ramo Stott #7 Superbird, is among the most complete.

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Two-Time Champion, One Very Specific Car

Ramo Stott spent most of his career racing in the ARCA circuit, where he became a two-time national champion, though he also made occasional appearances in USAC and NASCAR events. This particular Superbird won four races with Stott behind the wheel, three in ARCA and one in USAC, including the ARCA 300, the very first race a Superbird ever won. That victory earned Stott a waived NASCAR entry fee and a start in the 1970 Daytona 500, where he finished a respectable 8th in a race won by another Superbird, driven by Pete Hamilton.

The Blowtorch Fix NASCAR Never Saw Coming

After the car won its ARCA race, NASCAR inspectors refused to pass it through tech inspection, insisting the rear window sat too high, not the window frame, the actual glass. Rather than replace the piece, Stott took a blowtorch to the rear window and heated the glass just enough to buckle it into compliance. Period photos from the race show odd, warped reflections off the back glass, and the deformity is still visible today if you know exactly where to look.

Racing Where NASCAR Wouldn’t Let Him

Stott campaigned the Superbird through the entire 1972 season, something that would have been flatly impossible in NASCAR, which capped aero cars at 305 cubic inches starting in 1971 and strangled them out of contention that way rather than banning them outright. ARCA and USAC allowed minor body modifications NASCAR rules never would have permitted, including a front nose intake placement borrowed from the Charger Daytona’s design rather than the street Superbird’s, a change that improved engine cooling and gave Stott’s car a slightly different look than the road-going version most collectors know. The distinction wasn’t just cosmetic, ARCA’s more permissive rulebook let teams like Stott’s keep extracting a competitive edge out of a car design NASCAR had already decided was too fast for its own good.

An Engine Swap That’s Part of the Story, Not a Cover-Up

When Stott finally parked the car for good, it had a blown engine, and the car changed hands a few times before the current arrangement took shape: the blown race engine was replaced with a street Hemi, though every visible part on the car still comes from the original race-spec engine. The result looks correct, sounds the way it should, and runs, an honest compromise rather than an attempt to pass off a lesser engine as something it isn’t.

The Owner Who Turned History Into a Case File

Current owner Doug Schellinger has assembled a substantial archive of period photographs and news clippings documenting Stott and the car’s racing history, and he’s used that material to authenticate nearly every mark on the body. He can identify which specific race produced an almost imperceptible ding near the right rear quarter by the bumper, and he’s been handed photographs showing the exact welds on the passenger-side A-pillar from decades ago. That level of provenance is unusual even in a hobby known for obsessive documentation, and it’s part of why serious Mopar historians treat this particular Superbird as a reference point rather than just another survivor.

Where to Actually See It

Schellinger doesn’t keep the car locked away. He brings it to winged-car events regularly, and with its distinctive, and correct, period paint scheme, it isn’t hard to spot once you know what you’re looking at. For anyone chasing the intersection of documented race history and genuine survivor authenticity, this Superbird represents about as close to a paper trail as the winged-car world gets.

Why Winged Cars Still Command This Kind of Obsession

The Superbird and Daytona only existed for one or two model years each before NASCAR effectively legislated them out of competition, which means every surviving example represents a genuinely finite population. That scarcity, combined with the outlandish aerodynamic styling that looked more like a spacecraft than a stock car in 1970, has kept collector interest in winged Mopars climbing for decades, and cars with verifiable race history like Stott’s command a premium that ordinary street Superbirds simply can’t match.

How This Compares to a Street Superbird

A stock street Superbird buyer in 1970 got a car built for public roads, complete with a milder state of tune and standard creature comforts most race teams stripped out entirely. Stott’s car diverges from that formula in nearly every meaningful way, from the relocated nose intake to the reinforced chassis modifications ARCA and USAC permitted but NASCAR’s street-legal homologation rules never intended for daily use. That gap between showroom Superbird and genuine race car is exactly what collectors are paying for when a documented competition example like this one comes up for sale, and it’s why Schellinger’s archive matters as much as the sheet metal itself. Few genuine ARCA-era Superbirds retain this level of matched documentation, which is part of why Mopar historians treat Schellinger’s car as a benchmark rather than just another survivor on the show circuit.

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