Let’s have a show of hands: how many people can say they still own a car they bought in the 1960s? We imagine there are very few hands up in the collective musclecar world as some of us weren’t even old enough to buy a car at that point. Let’s face it: if you bought a car in the 1960s – even as late as 1969 – you’re likely in your mid-60s about now.

You can find Paul pushing his car pretty hard at local events.

We know there are a few people who still own their car after 40 years, and one of those is Paul Polenz, of San Diego. Paul bought his Bahama Yellow 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner from Stevens Creek Chrysler Plymouth in Santa Clara, California, on June 30, 1969. The car was a demonstrator model, and had about 1,500 miles on the clock before it was freshened up and sold to Paul.

For a mere $3,470, Paul brought home the Roadrunner and it’s been in his possession ever since. The trip from the early 1960s to today, has been quite a colorful one for Paul, as his family wasn’t always a Mopar family. His family drove anything from a 1949 Chevrolet to a 1972 Camaro SS – with a couple of Fords sprinkled in between.

Show and go: this beauty is also a 500+ HP beast.

But Paul’s love of all things Mopar, like many of us, started with a friend who owned a Mopar. In his case, it was a friend with a 1968 Plymouth GTX 440 with a 4-speed transmission. Though he was driving cars like his 1966 Mercury Comet, it wasn’t until Paul took a ride in his buddy’s GTX that he was hooked on Mopar. He was just a year out of high school, and even with prices what they were back then, Paul was not able to save up enough money to buy the car he wanted.

That’s when Dad stepped up and made Paul an offer he couldn’t refuse: he would pay for half the car, and loan Paul the other half, making regular payments to his father to pay off the loan. That’s when he paid a visit to the dealership and picked up his 1969 Roadrunner and took her home.

Paul felt it was time to freshen things up a bit, so off to Viau Motorsports for a complete restoration.

The Start Of Something Great

For a 20-year-old kid just out of school, cruising around in a 383-powered 4-speed Roadrunner would be the height of your summer cruising nights. But with anyone who is a true gearhead like Paul, the words more power are always the little voices in your head telling you that you need to go faster. That couldn’t have been more true for Paul.

The car was stripped of everything – including the paint, and taken down to bare metal.

In the 1980s Paul started racing his car at dragstrips in Southern California, including the famed Carlsbad Raceway. He still has stickers in the quarter window from his weekends at that track, which has long since been shut down. But in 2003, Paul was faced with a heavy decision to make after he grenaded his engine; the car sat for about eight years before he made his move.

Paul decided that he was either going to sell the car or restore it, and eventually chose the latter, and that brought him to the car that we see here. However, as great as the car was, he still wasn’t satisfied and decided to bring it to our friends at Viau Motorsports to freshen things up and turn his Roadrunner into a street/strip car, where Paul likes to spend some time behind the wheel like he did some 20+ years ago.

Paul has added a few custom touches to the car, namely the fiberglass front bumper and fiberglass six-pack style lift-off hood. Under that fiberglass hood, though, lies a beast of a different flavor. He opted to bump up the powerplant to a bored and stroked 440, bringing the cubic inches up to 500. Sitting on top of the Edelbrock dual plane intake manifold is a Holley 850cfm carburetor, and firing the holes is an MSD distributor and 6AL ignition box.

All business with high end performance parts.

TTI headers and Dynomax mufflers handle the exhaust duties, while a tried and true Mopar 8.75 rearend with 3.55:1 gears put the power to the Mickey Thompson drag radials. Connecting the power to the rear is an A833 18-spline Hemi 4-speed transmission with a McLeod RST Street Twin clutch and billet flywheel, protected by a QuickTime scatter shield. Shifting duties is taken care of by a Hurst Competition Plus shifter, and a custom-built 3.5-inch driveshaft with the popular 1350 U-joints transfers the power to the rear.

The suspension and brakes have been upgraded a bit, with 11.75-inch disc brakes up front to help with the stopping, and American Racing Torq-Thrust wheels add to the classic look of this beauty. Heavy duty Hemi torsion bars and leaf springs handle the torque sent through the drivetrain, with custom built frame connectors to keep the body from twisting up during those hard launches. Currently, Paul’s 574 horsepower and 632 lb-ft of torque are transferring about 471 horsepower and 546 lb-ft of torque to the rear wheels.

Keeping It Nice Inside

While the exterior got a new paint job and some custom graphics and pinstriping, the inside was not neglected. Paul kept the standard gauges, but added a retro-style Sun Tach, and a trio of Stewart Warner gauges to keep better track of the oil pressure, water temperature, and battery voltage. He replaced the front bench seat with the more-dragstrip-friendly bucket seats from a 1968 GTX, and recovered them with the correct Legendary Interiors seat covers.

Viau Motorsports magician in the shop, Aaron Bourdage, took careful time and precision to make the interior look as good – or better – than it did the day Paul bought the car. Not a single crack in the padded dash is evident, and the entire dashboard appears to be just about perfect.

The bench seat was also tossed, making room for buckets from a Plymouth GTX.

The business office end of this Roadrunner is looking through the windshield at a Christmas tree every chance Paul gets, and provides a little comfort for some of his regular driving to and from car shows ever few weeks and the few times a month that he drives it for fun. Of the shows he’s entered, he’s taken a couple of first place trophies, a best Mopar, and even placed second at the Grand National Roadster Show for 1960-1969 Conservative Hardtop entries in 2016.

The last restoration took a little less than a year and was completed in July 2015. The payout for Paul was just the Roadrunner he wanted: spiced up a bit, but looking like it did those 40+ years ago when he bought it new. Paul helped on the restoration as much as he could, and at this point he considers the car to be done – just the way he wants it. But we have a sneaking suspicion that there will always be another reason to make an upgrade or two, because we all know that a musclecar project may sometimes never get started, but they’re hardly ever “done.”