Olivia Thompson-Crosby is a unique character. The petite blonde from Ann Arbor, Michigan, at first glance, seems the typical millennial twenty-something. Her soft girlish features cleverly disguise the bad-ass hotrodder that exists below the surface. That is until you talk to her and when she walks up to her daily driver — a tribute 1971 Plymouth GTX!

At 27, she is already an accomplished car builder and enthusiast. Her 1971 GTX tribute, a car she built herself, and her collection of others, including a Super Bee, confirm her legit passion for ancient muscle cars — particularly Mopar.

We caught up with “Lead-foot Liv” in the Pima Canyon of South Mountain, outside Phoenix, Arizona, where the Michigan native now calls home. Upon pulling up, a quick blip of the shaker-clad V8 with side-pipes let everyone know she had arrived.

Inspired at an early age by a machinist father, who himself has a Plum-Crazy (repaint)1968 GTX convertible, was turning wrenches before she even hit High School. Talking Mopar with Olivia reminds one of the Marisa Tomei character, Mona Lisa Vito, in My Cousin Vinny, as she describes displacements, rear ends, and factory paint codes.

The GTX tribute is a project that began more than a decade ago when Olivia was in High School — before she even had a driver’s license. “I had just broken up with a boyfriend and he kept calling my parents landline.” Annoyed, she finally answered the phone and he told Olivia of a Plymouth Satellite Sebring Plus, with spares, up for sale, saying, ‘I know your family likes Mopars, and I just wanted to let you know about this car I found.’

Olivia would go look and ultimately buy the Chestnut Brown Satellite which came with two 440 cubic-inch engines and 319 cubic-inch installed. The owner was moving and needed to sell the car and parts. “I worked in a thrift store at the time and all the money I made went to the car.”

She has since advanced her career — in the car world. She is currently the Content Marketing Specialist at MW Company, which produces and sells, most notably, Momo steering wheels and Weld Racing wheels.

The 1972 Plymouth Satellite was built on the same B-body platform as the GTX, which made for a perfect template. However, the smaller displacement 318 cubic-inch V8, which still remains in the car is a story in itself.

The car had sat for a couple of years in the outbuilding of her parent’s property outside Ann Arbor. Olivia was ready to make it run. When she purchased the car, the original owner had receipts for a complete engine rebuild on the 318 with performance upgrades. Her dad felt the car was roadworthy, but needed the gas tank flushed and cleaned, plus the brake and fuel lines redone.

Olivia learned a lot on those projects. It should be noted that the left-side header was disconnected from the engine when bought, then sat. The day they were ready to fire the engine for the first time was one of frustration that so many of us know when resurrecting a car.

“My dad told me previous to turning the key, the engine needed to be manually turned first. We got a big-ass socket and torque wrench — and the engine wouldn’t turn. In the time it had sat with the header off, it had developed a rust pit on cylinder three. That was my first experience in a car breaking my heart. I figured I would be driving the car that night,” Olivia says.

So off came the Valve covers, nope. Then the heads… “I was devastated! I had just put three months worth the work into doing the brake and fuel lines and the gas tank. I was learning. But all of my work was still coming.”

In an act of sympathy and trying to instill determination in his daughter, her dad said, “Well we have to pull the motor and take it to a machine shop. But in the meantime, there are other things we can do. We can paint it, we can do the interior…”

That was when Olivia had the bright idea of swapping one of the 440 cubic-inch spares. That went over like a lead balloon. Her dad didn’t feel a 400+ horsepower car would be safe in a budding driver’s hands. With that sage advice, the 318 remains in the car today. “I figure when I blow up the 318, I can drop a 440 in it.” To Olivia’s chagrin, “I have tried to kill this motor and it just keeps going. They are reliable as hell.”

Inspired by her dad’s Plymouth GTX, Olivia also saw a ’71 GTX convertible in a car magazine called the “X Con.” She loved the color. “The Satellite had big ugly, frowny-face, chrome bumpers,” Oliva says. The Chestnut Brown finish didn’t pop either. Once work began on the body, she found a lot of Bondo and rusted sheet metal. It was then she learned to weld, patching several holes and panels. She then primed and painted — putting the tribute in a solid color from nose to tail. Add to that, she kept the original hood, but cut a hole and had her machinist dad fabricate a base plate for a shaker bubble, which she acquired at a swap meet, to cover the 625 CFM Street Demon carb.

While the car remains a work in progress and is far from a 1000-point concours vehicle, it has remained a labor of love for Olivia — and a head-turner everywhere she goes. The budget has been the biggest issue. “What does it need this week?” She sighs out loud at the thought of all the aftermarket parts and labor that went into it.

In the future, she has a 1971 Barracuda in the plans. “ My dream car has always been the ’71 Cuda. That’s the reason I put the shaker on the GTX. I just always wanted an E-body. I had been hunting for one for years. Then I came across a guy in Minnesota who had a bunch of ‘Cudas out in the woods behind his dad’s house — like a ‘Cuda graveyard.”

She ended up going back and forth between Ann Arbor and Minnesota to grab three of the specimens and tow them back. Her plan is to resurrect one, incorporating the parts from the others.

If you are in the Phoenix metro area and you see the flashy Hi-jacker, yellow car, give a wave to “Lead-foot Liv” and she will most likely return the favor with a 6,000 RPM blip.