At the beginning of BangShift.com, one of the earliest stories I can remember reading involved this very car. In the Mopar world, Gary and Pam Beineke had made a name for themselves by building the cars that Chrysler didn’t back in the halcyon days of the power wars. Without going into the long-winded form, it works like this: between 1968 and 1971 were some of the wildest times to be a designer at Chrysler. If it made the car faster, looked wild or screamed muscle car, it was all but promised to get the green light. Look at vehicles like the Aero Twins, the Demon 340, the Hemi ‘Cuda, and even the 440-6 Plymouth Fury. They all existed. And that’s what made it to market! But in 1972, there was an odd sucking noise around Auburn Hills. It was the sound of the fun slowly being sucked out of the place. NASCAR had freaked the hell out over the capability of the Dodge Daytona and Plymouth Superbird and did everything they could to ban them without actually banning them. The Hemi and the 440-6 disappeared, as did the A279 “ball-stud Hemi” engine program. Prototypes that could have been, that had managed to make it to mockup, were forgotten. Then the Beinekes came along and built several phantoms of cars that could have been. They built the 1971 Daytona and Superbird prototypes that never made it with the help of Dayclona, then just for good measure built a Super Bee-based variation as well.

Then came this car. Based upon a 1971 Plymouth, the Jet-X build is another phantom, a kick back to a John Herlitz concept the way he had envisioned it before beancounters neutered the car down to a trim package on the Road Runner instead of expanding the idea of the gentleman’s hot rod as the GTX had truly been envisioned to be. The hood, the hash marks, the Kelsey-Hays W23 wheels infamous for the recall, all of it was meant to be available for 1972. So was the 440-6, up until that program was cancelled in August 1971 after a few executives managed to get their orders in at the last second. No 1972 Plymouth GTX looked like this from the factory. But here it is, in metal and gasoline, ready to move you. Was it a bit wild for a gentleman’s machine? Compared to three stickers on a Road Runner, we will say no, it wasn’t. We know what history is, and what we wish it could have been. Real history tends to be brutal, boring, or otherwise uninspiring for the most part when it comes to cars. We’ll take a revisionist view of 1972 all day long and then some.

AllCollectorCars.com Link: 1971 Plymouth GTX “Jet-X” build by Gary and Pam Beineke