A Mopar running around at LS Fest is like seeing a clown run by on fire: you are going to notice, even if you weren’t looking. In the sea of GM products and swapped Fords and Nissans, a Chrysler product packing the Chevy heartbeat is either refreshing or revolting, and trust me, you will hear about it one way or another. Prior to the 2017 LS Fest, I had only seen two Mopars at the show: Karl Dunn’s 1970 Dodge Challenger that is an autocross monster, and a 2005-08 Dodge Charger that had a blown-up V6 prior to it’s conversion. Dunn’s car was absolutely unapologetic and the Charger simply got a lease on life, since a dead six usually means a death sentence and a trip to the crusher. But then there is this car: a Plymouth Duster that looks like one of the old Kit Car builds, with tons of tire sticking out of the wells, haunting the autocross and creating a crowd wherever it went. It was the first car I took a picture of for this year’s LS Fest, on Thursday when I went in to pick up my press passes, simply because it looked wild. (And yes, because I knew this car is going to scour some nerves.)

So where does the story start that involves a 1973 Plymouth Duster, of all cars, winding up at the biggest meet-up for fans of a General Motors engine? It begins with a hand-me-down Slant Six powered machine in yellow that Gordie Rutkowski got from his sister. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just a basic Duster. And it stayed that way for a bit, serving as Rutkowski’s driver for a while. But since he’s just as much a gearhead as anyone else reading this story is, the Duster didn’t stay stock for long. The A-body was first treated to a 318 swap and some hop-up parts to give it some oomph to back up the Duster’s great lines, and that lasted for a while. Then Rutkowski got serious and swapped in a nitrous-huffing big block Chrysler, tubbing the Plymouth out and eventually putting his sister’s old car into the tens on the dragstrip. After a while, he decided he wanted to freshen up the paint, so the car was stripped down in 1987…and that’s where this build begins.

You see, the Duster never got painted. For thirty years, it was shuttled from shop to shop, torn down and waiting, but the paint and re-build section of this program just didn’t happen. Life stepped in, and the Duster got the back burner treatment. And it stayed there until 2011, when a friend of Gordy’s named Nick suggested making a monster build out of a Corvette skeleton. Discussions happened, but when Nick passed away suddenly, things went back on hold and the Duster’s hibernation extended out a couple of years. Finally, realizing that the car was never going to be finished if action didn’t happen, the A-body was brought out of hiding in November 2016 and one major purchase was made.

A call was made to Cleveland Power and Performance in Columbia Station, Ohio and a C6 Corvette “rolling skeleton” chassis was sourced.  A basic LS2/T56 six-speed setup, the Corvette skeleton was the perfect starting point for a body swap. There was only a 2.4 inch difference in wheelbase between the Corvette and the A-body, so after the rear wheels were centered with the Duster body the front cradle was moved forward and the engine rearward in order to fit the package into the car with minimal hassle. Other than a clutch replacement, the running gear is dead nuts stock in the car and hasn’t been messed with, if you can believe that. RideTech coilovers at all four corners support the suspension, and Weld S-71 wheels wrapped in 335-series rubber at all four corners finishes off the running gear.

The look of the car certainly has a throwback NASCAR look to it, and that isn’t by happy accident. Rutkowski grew up going to races in the 1970s and he always enjoyed the stock-appearing cars with the massive tires poking out of the fenders. The interior is a display of his skill as an aviation sheetmetal worker, with clean lines and rivets properly spaced and set. It’s not subtle in the least. It’s loud but not deafening, and as we drove around the Beech Bend property the car was filled with the sounds of rocks pinging in the wheelwells. And it’s low, low enough that we may have high-centered the car at one point and nearly beached it on a slope in a parking lot that any other car wouldn’t have cared about.

And it’s that low, squared off stance that allowed driver Aaron Oberle to rip the autocross and 3S Challenge a new one throughout the weekend in Kentucky, between interviews and question-and-answer sessions from curious and puzzled onlookers, of course. The Duster ran a 12.7@110 on the dragstrip, with Oberle beaming about it (“We tree’d their ass!”). Considering that the car only had eighteen miles on it before coming to LS Fest, we’d say that the program is right on track. It’s not completed, but for incomplete, it’s pretty awesome.