Plymouth built only 64 of these 440 Six Barrel Sport Fury GTs for 1970, and this one had not turned over since a minor accident parked it in 1981. Dead Dodge Garage spent months chasing a stubborn carburetor problem before finally coaxing the numbers-matching big-block back to life. What they found under the hood tells a bigger story about how few of these full-size muscle cars are still running today.
Plymouth built exactly 64 of these engines into a 1970 Sport Fury GT, and for decades this particular one wasn’t among the ones anybody could drive. It sat parked since 1981, sidelined after a minor run-in with a ditch, its numbers-matching 440 Six Barrel never turning over again — until now. Dead Dodge Garage spent months chasing what looked like a simple carburetor problem on the car’s triple two-barrel setup, only to discover the real story was far more tangled. When it finally roared back to life after 45 years of silence, it briefly stood as one of the only running, numbers-matching Six Barrel GTs left on earth. The full video documents that entire fight, carb fix and all, and it’s worth watching start to finish.
Inside the Video: A 45-Year Restart
The video, posted by Dead Dodge Garage, picks up after the Sport Fury GT returned from a show appearance where it had run rough, stalled repeatedly, and generally refused to cooperate. The creator initially chalked it up to a sticking choke on one of the three Holley carburetors that make up the 440’s “Six Barrel” induction system — a straightforward diagnosis that turned out to be almost entirely wrong. What follows is a methodical teardown of ignition timing, fuel delivery, and decades-old rubber and gaskets that had quietly failed in ways a visual inspection wouldn’t catch. Commenters who know these fuselage-era C-bodies inside and out weighed in with their own war stories about Chrysler’s electronic ignition roots and the quirks of running three carburetors on one intake.
What makes the footage compelling isn’t just the mechanical detective work — it’s the payoff. After 45 years of sitting silent, the 440 Six Barrel fires, settles into an idle, and the car is driven again for the first time since a minor accident took it off the road in 1981. The channel has featured this specific car and its engine across several videos over the past year, working alongside fellow restorer Tom at Rocket Resto, who’s built a reputation for pulling rare, difficult Mopars back from the brink.
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Why the 440 Six Barrel Sport Fury GT Matters
The Sport Fury GT was Plymouth’s performance flagship built on the company’s full-size “fuselage” C-body platform — the same basic architecture underneath the period’s big Furys and Chryslers, styled with the smooth, rounded-off bodywork Chrysler leaned into for 1969 through 1973. Ordering the V-code 440 Six Barrel engine into that body turned an already large car into something genuinely unusual: a nearly two-ton full-size coupe running triple two-barrel carburetors and a factory rating of 390 horsepower, making it arguably the most powerful full-size passenger car Chrysler Corporation ever put into production. Most muscle car attention from this era goes to the smaller, lighter intermediates — the Road Runners, GTXs, and Super Bees built on Chrysler’s B-body. The Sport Fury GT took the same idea and applied it to a car built to carry a family and tow a boat, which is exactly what makes it such an oddball footnote in Mopar history.
For readers curious how Chrysler’s other numbers-matching rarities have fared decades later, MCF’s deep dive into a surviving 1971 Hemi Charger — one of only 63 ever built — covers the same territory of ultra-low-production Mopar muscle that spent decades tucked away before resurfacing.
Only 64 of these V-code 440 Six Barrel Sport Fury GTs left the factory for the 1970 model year, and the survival rate on cars like this has never been generous. Full-size performance cars were expensive to insure, thirsty at the pump, and unfashionable by the time the oil crisis hit a few years later — a lot of them were scrapped, neglected, or quietly swapped for smaller engines long before anyone thought to treat them as collectible. A car like this one, parked with its original drivetrain still intact rather than stripped for parts, is the exception rather than the rule.
The Rarest Kind of Muscle Car Story
What makes this Sport Fury GT’s return worth following isn’t just the horsepower figure or the production count — it’s the timing. When Dead Dodge Garage began filming this project roughly eight months before this video’s release, the working assumption was that this was the only numbers-matching, V-code Six Barrel GT still capable of running under its own power. That distinction didn’t last: not long after this video went up, word surfaced of a second numbers-matching example that had also been brought back to life. Rather than a permanent “last one standing” title, this car’s story is really about how thin the population of survivors has become — thin enough that finding a second running example felt like genuine news within the small community that tracks these cars.
That’s the appeal of full-size muscle like this: it never got the marketing spotlight the Road Runner or the Barracuda did, so almost nobody outside a small circle of Mopar diehards knows it exists. A car this obscure, this rare, and this thoroughly restored to running condition is the kind of find that reshuffles what collectors thought they knew about how many of these actually survived.
What to Watch For
Pay close attention to how much patience the diagnostic process demands. This isn’t a quick carburetor rebuild — it’s weeks of chasing a problem that kept presenting as one thing (a sticking choke) while the actual cause hid somewhere else in the ignition and fuel systems. For anyone who’s fought with a triple-carb Six Barrel setup, or any big-block Mopar sitting on decades-old wiring and rubber components, the troubleshooting here is a genuinely useful reference, not just entertainment.
The Six Barrel induction system itself is part of what makes cars like this one so fussy to bring back. Instead of a single four-barrel carburetor, Chrysler’s 440-6 setup runs three two-barrel Holley carburetors — a small center carb handles idle and light cruising, while the two outboard carbs open together under hard acceleration to feed the big-block everything it needs. It’s a mechanically elegant way to get big four-barrel power with better part-throttle manners, but it also means three times the linkages, gaskets, and float bowls that can go wrong after decades of sitting untouched. Viewers who’ve wrenched on these engines before chimed in with their own stories about keeping a triple-carb big-block happy — a reminder that this kind of restoration draws on a small, dedicated pool of specialists who actually know these systems firsthand.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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