SURVIVOR CARS—WHEN DO YOU CROSS THE LINE?

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The car hobby is like real life because you get a basic game plan, but there are explosions of reality every day. 

The key to both is simple—have a realistic plan.

The term ‘survivor’ is a touchy subject, because ‘survivor’ isn’t an absolute concept. Ask any keyboard hero on any random online forum what defines a survivor car, and you’ll get a hundred definitions–ranging from criminally uninformed to logical.     

I like to go with the obvious definition—any car that’s survived several decades in reasonable condition is a survivor. That eliminates some guy’s Falcon sitting in a swampy pasture for the last 50 years.

This is where the project car versus survivor car debate starts.

I want to start with a car that’s haunted me for over 10 years. It was a mint ’68 Plymouth Belvedere two-door sedan and it was for sale at a speed and custom swap meet.  This was what most guys call a six-cylinder granny car because it was so barebones its option list was only two lines.

I liked this car and the asking price was around 8000—a fair price because this was a 30,000-mile survivor in mint condition. Sure, it was such a base model, and it made a taxicab look like a limousine, but it was in spectacular shape.

I was the only guy there who thought this car should be left stock—this was a more-power crowd, not a museum crowd. They saw this Plymouth as a solid platform for a massive hemi—not a piece of history.

I’m sure that old Belvey is a Road Runner clone now because, from a financial perspective, Mopar muscle is worth 10 times what that humble Plymouth would bring at auction.

In the end there’s this reality.

Some guy showed up at a car show with yet another Road Runner clone–and a really cool survivor disappeared. There’s a small history behind the car’s rebirth as a muscle car, but the really cool story behind the Plymouth disappeared the day they ripped out the slant-six and torched out the motor mounts. 

This story would have had a different ending if the Plymouth was a lot rougher. In other words, a pasture car with no motor would have made more sense to me. The reality is the guy who bought the Plymouth made a great decision because a mint body probably saved him tens of thousands of dollars. He took a solid platform and spent the real money on go-fast stuff. That go-fast stuff probably pushed the Belvey well past six-figure numbers, so if he bought his power train wisely, he would make a serious profit on his 8000-dollar Plymouth.

That’s great in one way—I believe in free enterprise to the next power.

But I don’t believe in carving up history. There’s a defined line between rescuing a basket case, dumping the small block under the hood and building a resto-mod monster. If you bring a rough project back to life, you’re a hero because that requires skill, money and patience.      

By: Jerry Sutherland

Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post,  Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.

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