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Was This Plymouth’s Plummet from $1.65M to $418K a Reality Check?
Bird, it seems, is not the word. At least it wasn’t at the Mecum auction in Indianapolis last weekend. There, a Tor Red 1970 Plymouth Superbird sold for $418,000. It’s a solid number at first glance, quite close to what one of these high-flying Hemis is worth in our price guide.
But if you look a little into this car’s history, you’ll see that it sold for a record-breaking $1.65M just three years ago. Ouch. What happened?
Plymouth Superbird history actually starts with Dodge. Aiming to put the Charger at the front of the field in NASCAR racing in 1969, Dodge gave its Charger R/T heavily reshaped bodywork with a gigantic pointed nose and ludicrously tall rear wing. In a not-so-subtle nod to its NASCAR intentions, the new winged wonder was named the Daytona. For homologation purposes, Dodge built 503 total Charger Daytonas, and one of the racing versions was the first thing in NASCAR to hit the 200-mph barrier.
The Superbird, based on the Road Runner, was Plymouth’s follow-up to the Daytona a year later. Slightly refined but largely similar, it was the car to beat in the 1970 season. The series banned these “aero cars” for ’71, though, so the Superbird’s flight was short-lived.
Its time in the showroom was short-lived, too, but not as successful. By the time the Superbird debuted, homologation rules changed from 500 cars total (as with the Daytona) to one car produced for every two dealerships. For Plymouth, that meant nearly 2000 Superbirds. It may have looked just like the car you saw winning at Talladega, but as a street car it looked ridiculous, even cartoonish, with those massive Road Runner decals. It was impractical given the length of its overhangs, and it was expensive to buy and to insure as rates started to hit the muscle car market hard. Superbirds were a hard sell, and there are tales of cars languishing on dealer lots until 1972.
But that was then. As classic cars today, the ridiculousness of the Daytona/Superbird twins is part of their appeal for Mopar maniacs. The race history is, too, and practicality isn’t much of a concern, either. These days, nobody is parallel parking a Superbird and trying not to bash in that giant schnoz.
Of the nearly 2000 Superbirds built, just 135 left the factory with the range-topping 426-cubic-inch/425-horsepower Hemi. A little more than half (77) came with a TorqueFlite automatic. The rest got a 440-ci V-8 of either 375- or 390-hp output. Generally, colors can make a big difference in Superbird prices, and four-speed cars can command about 10% more than their self-shifting peers. In our price guide, Superbird values peaked in 2023, then dropped and have been flat for the past year, though they’re still comfortably higher than they were pre-pandemic.
The car sold at Indy, chassis RM23R0A172589, is a nicely restored and genuine Hemi car, and one of the 77 equipped with an automatic. When we saw it up close at Barrett-Jackson in 2022, it was the star of the sale and looked fantastic other than a few blemishes and cracks on the nose, as well as a few chips on the hood. But even if it had been better than perfect, the $1.5M winning bid ($1.65M with premium) was beyond top dollar for a Superbird at the time.
It was also (still is, actually) the most anyone ever paid for a Superbird at auction, squashing the previous record of $990K set a few months earlier. It was even higher than the then-$1.32M record for a Charger Daytona, which is a much rarer and typically more expensive car. Even in the super-heated pandemic-boom market of mid-2022, this was an extreme case of auction exuberance.
At the time, we called the result an “attention-getting outlier,” and it looks like we were right. No other sale since then has come close.
The buyer, car collector Bobby Knudsen, sadly passed away last year. His collection sold at Indy, featuring several mouthwatering muscle cars and historic drag racers, among them not one but two Pontiac Catalina “Swiss Cheese” cars. The ex-Jim Wangers one brought a very strong $742,500. The Superbird, however, flew lower at $418K. It even brought less than another clean Hemi/automatic car, this one finished in Lemon Twist (yellow), which sold for $605K.
If a $1.232M drop in price sounds drastic, that’s because it is. But that doesn’t mean muscle cars or even Superbirds specifically are crashing. As mentioned above, $418K is close enough to what other Superbirds have sold for recently, and although their values are down from their peak a few years ago, the huge gap in prices for this one is mostly down to it flying way too high in 2022, and then coming back down to earth in 2025.
When you have a lot off $$$ ,( like the guy now in Canada , $ 80 000 000 ,lotery win , tax free ), you pay what you like to pay , but don t expect you got you money always back , it depence on a lot off things
I’ve never heard of a tax-free lottery. I’m gonna call BS on that.
I actually attended BJ for the first time this year. Its interesting. Yes there were cars what went over market and there was a lot of stuff that was a fantastic buy. It all depends on who’s attending. There are two types of collector cars. 1) The premiums stuff that just keeps going up. V12 Ferraris from a certain era etc. 2) Wave cars., It was a poster, a Beachboys song etc. You get older, you have money and buy it along with the other people in your age group…, then you go to assisted living and your kids sell it…and all the other people that want it, they’re in a different assisted living facility.. ..and the price goes down. That’s what the Super Bird is, its a wave car. You just have to get off before the wave goes down…
I bought my 440, 4-speed Bird for $37k over 40 years ago and left it in a climate-controlled Kansas storage unit. Now I’m wondering if this is the right time to resurrect it and pay-off my kids’ student loans? Or maybe just drive it to Cars & Coffee?
Please just drive it, anywhere, anytime (but not in snow). Enjoy it before you sell it. Put on 900 miles a year for three years, then sell it and pay off the loans. I will bet you have so many memories of those three years that you will remember the car for the pleasure it brought you.
🎯💯💯💯
At any price above $60K is a rip off of these ugly cars.
Aren’t the latest Corvettes well above the $60k and FAR worse looking?
THAT is a ripoff.
If you take away the fact that there were only 2,000 of them (though there may be more than that today- just like Shelby Mustangs) there’s not much here. It’s impractical, no fun to drive, not particularly attractive, and certainly not a value. Essentially, it’s a status symbol for Mopar/Muscle Car collectors. With a shrinking base of people who covet these things, I think the price heads one way- down. If you were a star struck 10 year old when you first saw one, you’re collecting social security today. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that once the target audience for something is out of the market, prices fall. Don’t get me wrong; it’s an interesting model, part of MoPar history. But just like the Trupi-King Chevelle that Ray Allen drove so successfully, fame can be a fleeting thing. BTW, I believe it was an East coast car, out of New Jesey. Not many East coast racecars survived their competition careers.
I agree with almost all of the comments here. I bought a 1969 Firebird 400/4sp years ago. Not as an investment, but because I love driving it. I am having it restored and I know that if I ever did decide to sell it, I won’t get my money back out of it, but I will have had a lot of pleasure driving it and that’s the only reason I bought it.
Whether you like hearing this or not Barret Jackson is not the average hobbyist friend, like some of the previous comments they get the the bidders juiced up that have more money than brains and it leads to these exorbitant prices on these vehicles to guys that really only look at them as an investment. So prices are finally coming back to Earth which may get some real hobbyist a great vehicle. About time.
Never spend another man’s money, my friends. What is the point of having piles of cash if you don’t spend it on things you love? It’s really not good for anything else. I’m sure Mr. Knudsen died a very happy man.
back in the early days of Street Rodding the majority of us who attended the national events built our own cars, drove them to the event, as the years went by we started noticing a change in the participants, we coined them the gold chain crowd, they had lots of cash but no car building skills, I blame the TV shows that helped drive up prices on raw materials, a lot has changed from when I started building cars in the late sixties, eventually, the hobby will go the way of model car building and Lionel trains.
even at Smaller (more local) auctions I’ve never managed to buy a “Collector car–” People just get competitive & carried away with bidding- (I’m Not going to let Him beat me)- It’s folks with “Family Money” (inheritance ) that are mostly buying–Not those who actually worked for their money– I notice it at car meets as well -I’m the odd one out– It can be difficult to even talk with the others when your in a Lower tax bracket & don’t have a “Perfect” car-
Bought my Hertz 4-spd in Dec, ’85. Friend and I would hitch hike down to Dockery Ford and wait for race team to arrive back to dealer. Then hitch hike/walk back home. When my car became available I jumped on it, Worked a deal and drove it home three days later. I finally had a Shelby 350 with a 4-spd. Bought it for fun and memories. I don’t care what it’s worth today just because it is fun and memories. When I “Light-Up those Tires” my grand kids Laugh and Cheer. Now they have memories.
Another case of affluenza.
You never know what drives people. Sometimes is just as simple as trying to revisit your past. The collector past but I bet he had unmatched enjoyment when this bird spent its first night in his garage.
I never knew Bobby Knudsen, nor his reasons for buying this car in 2022. I do know that he died in December of 2024 after a long battle with health issue(s). I also know he was a “Car Guy” Maybe; just maybe, he knew in 2022 that he was “Aging Out” of this world and he just WANTED this car before he passed-on. I hope he enjoyed the hell out of owning this car…
I remember when it sold for $1.6. I also remember shaking my head when it happened.