(By Greg Rourke) – I’ve always been amazed at how knowledgeable the Mopar guys are with their favored marque. “This was the only Fury III with a 2 barrel 318, with the AM radio set for 1160 AM built on January 14, 1967” they will proudly tell you. And who am I to argue? Anyway, here’s a scene from one of my favorite movies, “Gone In 60 Seconds”, of course the original 1974 version. A Mopar aficionado has clarified a few details for us.

What has happened before this scene is the bad guys have purchased at auction a very wrecked Challenger R/T, that looks to have cozied up to a fixed object at considerable speed. They remove any identifying documentation, including the engine and trans, door handles with lock cylinders, even the broadcast sheet under that back seat. They cut up the rest. Then they go steal it’s twin from a local parking lot. All the wrecks numbers are put onto the stolen car, and presto they have a stolen car with new numbers and a clear title. The trouble begins when an insurance investigator spots this formerly totalled car now sitting pretty only five days after it was sold. Solution, steal it back.

Yes, the chase is cool with what was a state of the art wrecker in the 70’s, an F350 with sling type wrecker, the type yours truly towed many a car with. What the Mopar guys have noticed is the car has what looks like a 73-74 grill and taillights, but R/T badging. No R/T was available in 73-74, only the Rallye. So some genius has freeze framed the scenes where they are changing the serial numbers and looked up what the cars actually were. The wreck was a 1970 R/T with a 440, 4 barrel, the stolen car a 383, 2 barrel, base model. As the movie was released in 1974, they were likely trying to make it look like a current model. Back in the gas crunch, a 1970 R/T 440 was likely worth it’s weight in scrap metal and therefore not worth stealing.

So….”Skid”, a poster in the IMCDB.com forums, a tip of my Panama to you, sir.