To be fair, Chad saw it first and could not shut up about it, and rightfully so: he told me that I had to hunt down this rough-looking Mopar wagon running in Nostalgia Super Stock at Indy. Ok…there were sixty-one entrants in Nostalgia Super Stock, and it’s a Mopar product. Good thing it’s a wagon, or I would have been searching all day for this beast, but once I saw it there was no doubt that I had found the right car. Robert Peffley’s 1965 Plymouth Belvedere I stood out for all of the right reasons.
Sitting in the staging lanes with the prettier cars, there is no doubt that the Plymouth looks rougher, but it is certainly eye-catching to us.
Ooooh, this is a good sign…
Hand-lettering and Cragars on rough paint? Nice.
The Indian blankets are nice, but the three pedals, shifter and tach are nicer.
Some stickers are old, some are new…
…some are just awesome.
Where a slant-six used to occupy space is now filled with a 1968 440 that sports 906 heads and is good for about 450 horsepower.
Backing up that 440 is a completely stock A-833 four-speed manual transmission, which sends power out to a Mopar 8.75 rear end packing 4.56 gears.
To date, the Belvedere’s best e.t. is a 12.21 @ 113 mph. It’s wasn’t the fastest car in the ranks, but it’s street-driven, runs hard and appeals to the gritty side of us, the one that digs these rough runners.
Time for a quick question before I lock myself in the bathroom for the day – why were station wagons sometimes preferred as I would have thought that the times would have been slower with all that extra bodywork?
Lots of weight over the rear for weight transfer and traction. And they rock.
I like that a lot. Would absolutely love it if they ditched the patina look, and put some paint on it with steel wheels (either the mopar rallye or dog dish style). Other than that its a dream.
the patina is the look and the Cragers are what make it paint would ruin this car!