One of the most famous cars to hit the muscle car era was the Plymouth Superbird. It’s hard to imagine someone being a gearhead and not knowing what a Superbird was; even the most die-hard Chevy fan would have to have some familiarity with it. The Superbird, and it’s sister car the Dodge Daytona, were the cars that changed things with NASCAR, because hitting 200 mph was something that had become a regular thing to these two winged warriors.

As cool as that sounds, that these cars were hitting such great speeds, they didn’t sell very well at the dealerships. The same wings and nose cones that helped these cars achieve 200 miles per hour were, unfortunately, too “ugly” to the public and looked awkward and out of place on the street. Even at a mere $4000, they sat in back lots unsold. Some of the Superbirds were converted back to a Road Runner to try to sell it.

But jump ahead 42 years and an original Superbird with a 426 HEMI can fetch upwards of $200,000. You could only get the Superbird with two engines: a 440 ci Super Commando or the famed 426 ci HEMI. The Super Commando was available with either the single four-barrel carburetor, or the six-pack; the 426 HEMI had dual four-barrel carbs and was a homologation of the Street HEMI which was available in other models, including the Road Runner.

The Superbird you see here is a numbers matching 1970 425 hp 426 HEMI, with just shy of 21k miles on the clock. The car has undergone a complete and meticulous rotisserie restoration, restoring it back to original factory specifications. With certification from Galen Govier, a well known author and Mopar afficionado within the registry world, and full documentation via it’s broadcast sheet, you can expect this pristine example to reach some impressive figures at the Barrett-Jackson auction in Las Vegas, on September 20-22. You can check it out further on their site, lot #670.

With HEMI ‘Cuda convertibles reaching millions, a quarter mil doesn’t seem so bad. But then again, there were a little over 1,900 Superbirds for 1970 versus only 14 HEMI Cuda convertibles that same year. No matter how you slice it, the Superbird makes a statement just sitting there.