Five words: Plymouth Road Runner Superbird Hemi…
It was April of ’85, remembers Joe Wisnet from Appleton, Wisconsin. He was thumbing through the Hemmings Motor News classifieds looking for a Hemicar. Joe had just been aced out of a beautiful Tor Red 440-6 SuperBird that he had agreed to buy the day before. He had gone to the bank for the cash and another buyer beat him out. A blessing in disguise, says, Joe, because he would have never picked up Hemmings and found the ad for a Hemi SuperBird. The seller from Oklahoma wasn’t a Mopar guy, he collected Ford racecars and just happened upon the bird. The seller sent some photos and the car looked right.
Joe didn’t have the time to make the trip, but he could meet him halfway. So Joe meets the seller at the Steak ’n Shake. The seller unloads the bird out of his big enclosed trailer, and Joe loves it. It’s in great shape except for some nose damage. It is number-matching and fully documented. He loads the car onto his open trailer and heads back to Appleton.
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Joe didn’t do anything to the bird except drive it and enjoy the full potential of the Hemi. His favorite story about the car is when a buddy of his who owned a Viper invited him to ride along with the local Corvette club to a car show in Elkart Lake. Returning from the show, Joe was on a back road behind his buddy in the Viper and a Vette was behind him. They were going pretty good, according to Joe. The bird’s windows were all down and the suction inside the car pulled down the headliner. Joe had his wife crawl into the back to roll up the back windows and push up the headliner. His speedo showed 90 MPH. At the end of the run, the Viper guy told Joe he was keeping up pretty good. “Yeah,” said Joe, “we were hitting 90.” Joe’s bud looked at him and said, “90, hell. We were going 130.”
Let’s back to our story. About five years ago, Don Doctor decided to add a third Mopar to his Nats Gold ’70 340 ’Cuda and mild custom ’73 500-inch Road Runner. Both cars were done by a high-end restoration shop, Creations by Gemza in Denver, North Carolina. He asked Steve Gemza, “What’s the ultimate SuperBird?” There was only one answer – a matching numbers Hemi 4-speed. Heck, they only made 58 of them. “Great, find me one.” “It’ll probably take some time.” “No, problem, I’m a patient man.”
Steve started looking but it was not an easy task. Fortunately a good friend of Steve’s in the Chicago area called him and said he was going to look at a Sublime green 440-6 auto Super- Bird. His dream car was a Sublime 4-speed bird, but he’d settle for the auto if the car was right. Steve told him to call when he got there and Steve would tell him what to look for in checking out the car. Steve’s bud called and said the asking price of the green bird was too steep. But, he added that sitting next to the green car was a 440 Tor red survivor SuperBird that the owner had bought in ’79. And, sitting next to that one was a Hemi 4-speed orange numbers matching bird. All were for sale. Steve’s bud was standing in Joe Wisnet’s garage.
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