Super Stock Survivor: Original 1963 Plymouth 426 Super Stock Belvedere Coupe 3-Speed

Why We Like It

Throughout the 1960s, Detroit’s major automakers chased sales success with increasingly wild production-based cars designed and built to vie for NASCAR and NHRA Super Stock dominance. While the various General Motors divisions tried to cope with the giant corporation’s self-imposed anti-racing policy of 1963, Chrysler and Ford produced competition-worthy machinery in an all-out arms race for virtually every type of automobile racing. Technology increased rapidly at the factories’ development labs and at the track, and by 1963 many stock-appearing drag racing cars arrived with lightweight aluminum body panels, bumpers, and interiors, heavy-duty powertrain components and monstrously powerful race-worthy engines. As raced, they soon became quicker and more specialized with altered wheelbases, radical lightening, and exotic multi-carburetor setups, fuel injection, superchargers, and volatile Nitromethane fuel loads in quick succession. Elapsed times dipped into the 10-second range and lower with wild wheelstands, often to the chagrin of auto-company executives but electrifying fans everywhere.

While the bulk of Plymouth Belvederes built with the monstrous “Cross Ram” twin-4-barrel 426 Super Stock mill were equipped with Chrysler’s pushbutton Torqueflite automatic transmission or New Process 4-speed manual unit, this 1963 Plymouth Belvedere is equipped with a heavy-duty 3-speed manual transmission with “cue ball” floor shifter. Delivering 415 horses with 11.5:1 compression, this former drag strip warrior looks awesome and ready for battle, and it marks an exciting find for collectors of survivors from the early-1960s Super Stock drag racing wars – the ultimate extension of the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” ethos. The seller reports they’ve owned it since 2003, and that it’s thankfully listed in Galen Govier’s Chrysler Registry.

While Detroit’s “Big Three” duked it out on the track every weekend, North American automobile customers reaped the benefits with quicker and faster cars available right off the showroom floor. Our subject car features particularly desirable styling, especially after Chrysler Corporation’s disastrously downsized and controversially tailored model lines of 1962. Clean and unadorned, this handsome Super Stock Belvedere only tips its hand in visual terms with American Torq-Thrust mag wheels up front, and badass steel wheels with drag slicks at the rear.

While our subject is part of pure muscle car royalty, pricing is surprisingly low, with Hagerty’s guide putting values from $16,700 for a #4 driver, all the way up to $48,400 for a concours-level #1 vehicle, although auction results in recent years would tell a different story, with examples bid to - and occasionally selling - in the $55-$75k range. Are these mysterious outliers, or a sign of growing appreciation for these rare beasts? Only time will tell, and while our subject Belvedere is priced near the top of the market, few survivors are this clean and nice, leading us to consider it worth the premium with the possibility of appreciation in the near future.