RIDE-CT – Classic Cars Celebrating Classic Cars in Connecticut
SALISBURY, CT – A rare and low-mileage Plymouth Superbird that has had owners in Northwest Connecticut for the past 54 years sold today for a hefty $286,000 in an online auction on Bring a Trailer, a model record for the online auction site. The identity of the buyer has not yet been disclosed.
The bright orange Superbird came to Connecticut in June 1971 when it was purchased near Pawling, NY for approximately $4,000 by Mary J. P. Moore of Sharon, CT.
Moore, the mother of well-known race driver and race announcer Sam Posey, owned the Superbird until her death in 2010. Ownership passed to Mike Metzger of Salisbury, who died in early April. His family then decided to sell it.
“It was very exciting,” said Metzger’s brother, Tom Metzger, of the auction, reporting that he was “more than pleased” with the outcome. “You can only dream of having something that would go that high. I had it appraised and it wasn’t that high.”
The price obtained for the Superbird set a Bring a Trailer record for the model. Other Superbirds have sold in recent years on the auction site for prices ranging from $129,000 to $266,000.
Metzger suggested that his brother’s Superbird fetched more because of the documentation and other paperwork that came with it.
Metzger added that “it’s very sad” to see the Superbird leave. “It’s only going away because Mike passed away. I would rather have Mike here driving the car. I’m so used to all his cars and they’re all gone,” he said.
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The Superbird is one of 1,920 examples of a one-year-only variant of Plymouth’s Road Runner muscle car model that were produced. The Superbird featured a cone-shaped nose, rear wing, pop-up headlights, a 440-cubic-inch V8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission.
In a My Ride story about the Superbird done five years ago for the “Republican-American” newspaper in Waterbury, CT, Mike Metzger recalled hearing about the car about 10 years before setting eyes on it.
“I was told by a person in a car wash that an old lady in Sharon owned a Superbird,” he said. “Ten years later, a friend of mine that works in a body shop calls me up. He said, ‘The old lady is Sam Posey’s mother and it’s going to Amelia Island to be sold. We have it right now at the body shop…’”
Metzger went to see the car, then asked Posey if he’d consider an offer prior to the Superbird going to auction. “Two days later, I had the car,” he said.
Metzger brought it home and started cleaning it up. “There was a lot of mice in it. It had been sitting for a while. Mary Moore had it for 40 years. She was just about 90 when she passed away.” (According to an obituary in “The New York Times,” Moore died in August 2010 at age 91.)
The car came with a lot of documentation; from a build sheet to dealer paperwork that Metzger kept in a thick binder.
Metzger said Moore first spotted the Superbird sitting aside a road near Pawling with a “For Sale” sign on it. “Over the next 40 years, she put 6,000 miles on the car, and most of it was doing charity work and things like that with the car.”
Metzger used the Superbird sparingly as well, but often took it to car shows where its decals showing the Road Runner cartoon character attracted the attention of kids. He welcomed youngsters to sit in it. “When I bring this, there’s usually not another one there,” he said.
When Plymouth introduced the Superbird in 1970, the reaction among the car-buying public was tepid due to its polarizing styling. “It was just different,” said Metzger.
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A lifelong car buff and owner of Chevrolet Corvettes, Metzger was among those attracted to the model. “Everybody thought they were kind of ugly and made fun of the wing, but I looked at and said this thing’s awesome,” he said.
The car features a Vitamin C Orange paint scheme with black vinyl top, which demands attention. The numerous Road Runner cartoon decals add a humorous element as does the horn, which goes “Beep, beep.”
“It’s colorful, it’s big, it’s unique. That’s the bottom line,” said Metzger, who developed his love of cars as a kid and even has a picture of himself as roughly a five-year-old sitting in a wooden car that his father built for him. “Once the ’63 Corvettes came out, I was hooked. I was a Corvette guy mostly,” he said.
Metzger enjoyed driving the Superbird, which currently shows 29,000 miles on its odometer. “It’s basically a nice car to drive. It cruises right along,” he said, explaining that power steering makes it much easier to drive than his old Corvettes.
Metzger made one miscue with the Superbird when freshening it. The first owner didn’t have “Plymouth” emblazoned on either side at the rear of the car. He added the brand name but did so in black. It was later that he learned that to be accurate, it needed to be in white – based on the coloring of the lettering around the Road Runner cartoon on the wing. So, he changed the logo to white. “Mopars were foreign to me compared to Corvette,” he said.
Regardless, the Superbird found a good home where it is meticulously maintained for 15 years, with Metzger serving as dutiful custodian for what is a memorable model.
Details on buyer are not known. Bring a Trailer listed the winning bidder as OS Gallery. Tom Metzger said he doesn’t even know the name or the location of the buyer yet.
(Photos by Bud Wilkinson.)
