The story of the Plymouth Superbird is fairly well-known, so we won’t get into heavy details. But in brief, it was designed and introduced following the on-track success of its older sibling, the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, so that Plymouth could race its own highly engineered winged car in NASCAR in 1970. There is also much speculation that Plymouth developed the modified Road Runner to attract Richard Petty back to the team after he moved to Ford. Of course, for the car to be eligible for NASCAR, at least 2,000 units had to be produced for consumer sales, the last of which (according to AeroWarriors.com) was manufactured on this day in 1969. You can see it below.
They may not have hit the mark. Chrysler planned to sell approximately 2,783 Superbirds, but total production estimates fall just short of the necessary 2,000 needed for legal competition, ranging between 1,969 and 1,982. In any case, the car did its job, luring Petty back to Plymouth and winning eight races for the 1970 NASCAR season.
The production run for the cars was short, with the first one leaving the line on October 22, 1969 and the last on December 15, 1969. Pictured above is what’s claimed to be the final Superbird built, which is a four-speed, 440 Limelight green car. While the top of the line 426 Hemi ‘birds tend to command the most dough, the one claimed to be the last off the line sold for $165,000 in 2015.
