Blue Bird

John Castleman has owned his Plymouth Superbird for nearly three decades and he’s spent much of the past 10 years rebuilding every inch of it.

- Mike Renaut

Owning a genuine muscle car in the mid-Seventies got you much admiration when most young lads had merely warmed-over Minis or Escorts. John Castleman was guaranteed respect at the traffic lights when he rolled up in his first American car – a 1968 Charger. Trouble was, one of his mates could go one better. “He had a Superbird,” remembers John, “I’d never seen one before and it looked so outrageous with that nose cone and massive wing. I saw the Road Runner logos and thought it was a cartoon car until I read up on them. When I found out about the NASCAR history I knew I had to have one.” John eventually bought himself an orange Superbird in 1979. “It cost me £1500. I knew a few other people who had them but not many, in the UK there were probably about five and we knew who and where they were.”

But our feature car isn’t the one John bought in ’79. No, back then the ’Bird on these pages was owned by American Autoparts. “I’d known about it since 1977 and I more or less followed it around from owner to owner. Rumour is, it was even owned by a window cleaner who put a roof rack on it and tied ladders on top! It then ended up in Scotland owned by a bloke called Bobby McIntyre – he planned to open a museum and was going to redo the Superbird as a NASCAR racer. I had relatives locally, so I visited the car several times between 1984 and ’85 and it was already in pretty poor condition by then. It had a brown Dralon interior, a home-made nitrous system and damage from a lot of street racing. When Bobby died around 1988 his entire collection of cars went up for auction by Sotheby’s; the Superbird had an estimate of £2400 but in the end I had to pay £6300.”