I can already hear the comments of “worthless piles of rust” coming, so save your breath. Yes, both of these 1978 Dodges are rusty. They’re Aspens…c’mon, if you didn’t go in expecting to find some sort of sheet metal cancer somewhere in the cars, you really need to start doing your homework. These aren’t garden variety Aspens, though: the blue one with the “43” on the side is a Petty Kit Car, and the extremely beat brown one is a Super Coupe. Decal GT cars to the core, this was Chrysler’s hot streak for 1978 if you didn’t want a pickup, and to be quite fair to Chrysler Corporation, they could hang with what was out on the streets for that year. They’d still get their faces caved in if they tried to pick a fight with so much as a small-block Vega, sure, but for off of the showroom floor, they did well enough.

So why in the hell am I gushing over two semi-rusted Mopar F-bodies? Two reasons. The first is that both of these cars are low-number, high interest machines. Only 531 Aspen Super Coupes were made (Plymouth got their own Volaré Super Coupe) and only 145 A43 Petty Kit Car Aspens were made, period. They fit the 1970s mold perfectly: window louvers, flares on the fenders, ducktail spoiler, 15×8 wheels that are now hot commodities in the Mopar community (and one of Chrysler’s better wheel designs), etc. But this was also the last bastion of V8 performance from Mopar for years, with the 360ci LA small block the top-tier option. A 360-powered, Lean Burn-equipped Kit Car could run a 15.9 quarter, trapping nearly 90 miles an hour. Weak sauce, we know, but gut the Lean Burn garbage off of it, give the engine some cam, some better spark and for the love of all that’s holy, heads that can actually breathe and you’ll do a damn sight better than that.

So, what is the real appeal of two Mopars that are being hucked for $5,000? Race cars for the street. You might be able to clean up the Petty Kit Car if you so desire. You might even be able to rescue the Super Coupe. But we wouldn’t change much of anything. Here, the patina looks right…it’s earned. Both cars deserve 408 strokers, cams that rock the cars at idle, and wide gearing for some long-distance running. Give them some of that NASCAR look that Chrysler was desperately trying to get back, and give them the power to pull it off. These are two zombie racecars, waiting to be brought back to life. And as a pair, they’d be a knockout.

Craigslist Link: 1978 Dodge Aspen A43 Petty Kit Car and 1978 Dodge Aspen Super Coupe