Title: 1970 Plymouth Superbirds
Date: December 2003
Author: Greg Wooley

1970 Plymouth Superbirds are truly rare cars. Less than 2000 were built for street duty. This was the minimum to qualify the car for NASCAR racing.

I grew up in the small community of Yuma Tennessee and while I was still a young boy a neighbor of our family bought one brand new. Before being bought, the car sat on the dealership lot at Helm's Motor Company in Lexington Tennessee for almost a full year. My neighbor got her at dealer cost because the dealer was more than ready to rid the car from the sale's lot. It was Red, black interior with the base 440-4bbl and automatic transmission. It seemed no one was interested in this strange Bird of an automobile. My neighbor was already in his 50's and he was just looking for a really good buy on affordable transportation.

Nobody here in Yuma knew what to think of this odd animal with it's pointed nose and huge rear wing that seemed to just miss the utility wires high above. I remember one occassion when I was hanging around the town store with some older farmers and the Superbird came cruising by and all the old fellows were saying "what the #$% kinda car was that".

The car was daily transportation for the owner and his family. He had 3 teenage daughters and they drove it to High School very often. The last time I remember seeing the car the rear tires were mud grips.

The owner kept the Superbird until the late 1970's. It was sold to an out-of-state traveler from Kentucky who spotted it sitting in the driveway and got it for $3000.00.

Years passed and I met up with my former neighbor in the early 1990's and I asked him about his old Superbird. He had already learned that those cars nobody wanted way back were now some of the most sought after cars ever built.

Nowadays, when I'm lucky enough to catch a glimps of one of these beautiful machines in a magazine or at a Mopar event, I always think of my former neighbor (now deceased) and the car he gave a home to that no one else would have.

They were a little radical for that era I suppose, but they were also many years ahead of their time.