Vehicle Description

In this day & age of are, big dollar cars, what makes a car truly rare? It seems that every car you see these days is a "one of one". I've always thought the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. OK, Chrysler only made one brown 1970 Barracuda with a green interior, and a 383 with a 4 speed, with a green vinyl top and air conditioning. Is this really a rare car or just some obscure combination of a car that they made hundreds of thousands of? Is it historically significant in any way? Will people remember this car in 100 years? Of course not. The car will be lost to the sands of time and in crushed to nothing within 100 years.

When car collectors look back at the muscle car era in 100 years, what will constitute a historically significant car? Cars with low production numbers, that were purpose built to do one thing well: go fast in a straight line! Chevrolet had the ZL1 Camaro. Ford had the 429 Mustang.

Chrysler produced an army of cars that went fast, but very few that were purpose built from the factory to rule the street, with the exception of the 1969 1/2 A12 lift-off hood cars. On the Plymouth side of the ledger, 615 A12 coded Plymouth Road Runners were produced, 227 with automatics and 388 with 4 speeds. Named Car of the Year by Motor Trend Magazine for 1969, these cars were purpose built by Chrysler to do one thing: rule the street!

And rule the street and the drag-strips they did. Out of the box, these were the fastest cars every produced by Chrysler ... faster than any stock factory hemi car! With features like a Dana 60, 3 Holley 2 barrels on top of a built 440 engine, a lightweight Edelbrock manifold, removable fiberglass hood, and a host of other goodies, these cars were Chrysler's definitive statement of the muscle car era.

And, as the history books show, these cars were used and used hard! Very few of the A12 cars exist today with their original drive trains, as most of them were blown up early on in their lives, as they pounded drag-strips all over the United States.

Now let's switch gears. Over the last 3-4 years, the hottest cars in the collector car market have been the vintage drag racers. I've watched these restored cars that made history during the muscle car era bring huge money ... upwards of one million dollars. In response, people sitting on these vintage pieces all over the country have rushed to pretty them up and cash in on the frenzy.

One common theme with these cars is they have very little, if any, of the original parts & pieces that were with the cars when they made history. In fact, the vast majority of them were built 7 times over and then stuffed away in a garage when they were too broken and tired to compete any longer. Restore the cars with a trailer load or non-original parts, put on a shiny new paint job, have the guy that raced the original car back in 1970 show up and PRESTO , half a million bucks!

What if one of these cars existed that was never cut up and never butchered and never restored? And what if this car only had one owner its entire life? And what if that owner was a writer for a national drag racing publication and the car was featured in print, many, many times over the span offour decades? And what if that car was a multiple National NHRA champion, setting National Class Records? And what if that car was an extremely low production, historically significant car with all of its original documents, including the original title? How rare would this car be? I would submit that this would be one of the rarest and most historically significant muscle cars in the history of the hobby.

If you are a serious muscle car collector or Mopar fan, this 1969 1/2 Plymouth Road Runner A12 is the very definition of the muscle car era, and a potential crown jewel for any serious collection.

On July 30, 1969, Edward G. “Ted” Struse, Jr. of Philadelphia, PA purchased this car from Knopf Motors, Inc., of Ambler, PA. Present is the ORIGINAL dealer Bill of Sale, the ORIGINAL Retail Installment Contract with Chrysler Credit Corporation; the ORIGINAL title issued August 25, 1969, the ORIGINAL Chrysler Corporation Car Production Broadcast Sheet; the ORIGINAL Operator's Manual, and; the ORIGINAL Warranty Booklet (with the correct tag on the front cover for 440 6 pack cars). The 1969 1/2 Road Runner that Ted Struse purchased was configured as follows: (01133) Lynch Road base/gate number; (275276 (Lynch Road sequence number0 (925) 440+6, 4 speed-spec engine; (999) special axle 4.10 ratio Dana 60; (603) 18 spline A-833 4 speed; (26) 26" radiator; (A12) 440+6 package group; (97 97) body/roof paint colors, Rallye Green; (M2X) Road Runner (base) bench seat interior, black; (X9) Black upper door frame paint; (RM21) Road Runner 2 door post coupe; (E63) 383 4 barrel (cars were converted, this is correct for A12 cars); (D21) 4 speed transmission; (426) April 26 1969 build date, and; (948818) vehicle order number. The rest, as they say, is history.

See, Ted Struse wasn't your typical Mopar fan, nor was he a teenager looking for a hot car to thrash at the local drag-strip. Ted Struse was a real gear head ... so much so that he became a writer for Super Stock & Drag Illustrated. He purchased the A12 Road Runner because he knew what a special car it was. From the day he purchased the car, it was garaged and never spent a night outdoors. Moreover, the car was only driven in good weather, as it was practically useless on a wet road. Originally, he purchased the Road Runner for every day driving, but quickly realized that due to the extremely poor fuel economy and massive power generated by the 440 6 Pack engine, this was not a car that could not, as a practical matter, be driven daily. Ted drove the car regularly theough early 1970, and then only took it out on special occasions. In late 1971, the Road Runner was driven on the road for the very last time in it's life (to date). At that point, Ted started to race the Road Runner at the Atco Dragway in New Jersey on weekends, and started piling up a lot of class winner trophies with the car.

In 1972, when the NHRA dropped a bomb on the sport of drag racing, Ted decided to take the gloves off. To quote Ted Struse from the July, 1972 issue of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated: "Until 1972, anything affordable enough for the average guy to drive on the street wouldn't have a snowball's chance of picking up a major eliminator win, let alone win the national record" "Fully realizing that street racing was becoming a real problem, the folks at NHRA set about to try and remedy the situation. The result is a set of rules that go a long way toward bridging the gap between competitive strip, and sensible street." Ted was referring to the newly created Stock Eliminator class.

Think about it .... the early muscle cars spawned the factory drag racing wars of the early 1960's, which spawned ever wilder muscle cars in the late 1960's. Throughout this era, cars continued to go faster & faster, both on the street and at the strip, but at a certain point, a separation occurred. To be competitive at the strip, you had to spend a fortune, and you had to build a car that was not a functional street machine. This helped spawn an ever-growing and ever more dangerous street racing culture (which Chrysler paid homage to with the A12 cars), so the NHRA decided to set everything right by creating the Stock Eliminator class. The rules were straightforward: headers were out, slicks were out and nothing but stock cams were out. Distributors had to retain their stock body and lightweight racing pistons were not allowed. There were many other changes as well. The cutoff for Stock Eliminator was 9.0 pounds per advertised horsepower. This rule was put into effect due to NHRA's desire to eliminate the super high risk machines from the category, thus freeing the budget racer from the necessity of having a scatter shield to compete. Simply put, this new class, with its associated rules, provided the opportunity for a sharp guy with a decent car to win the nationals, and then drive the car home afterwards.

With this new class in mind, Project Six Pack was born, and officially debuted in the July, 1972 issue of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated. The purpose of Project Six Pack was simple: to go after the record and national competition in A/SA class, and, while doing so, document the entire project in the pages of Super Stock, and pass along the performance gains & knowledge to their readership base.

In the October & November, 1972 issues, multiple pages & pictures document how Project Six Pack was set-up in preparation for a run at the national title. Run only 11 times in 1972, Project Six Pack tied the national record for the class on its second run, running a 13.12 at 109.09.

The car was tweaked for 1973, where it immediately set its sight on the national record of 12.47, set by another A12 Road Runner. While it did not achieve this mark in 1973, the team of Struse, Smith, Welsh, Shaws, Risslers & S/S Magazine continued to tweak and campaign Project Six pack for years.

Project Six Pack went on to break and hold both ends of the C/S National Record, won class at the Sports nationals two years in a row, and won a trailer full of local Stock Eliminator titles. The car ran a best of 11.61 at 118.26, all in NHRA legal trim.

Present with this car are the ORIGINAL NHRA National Class Record certificates and every issue of Super Stock & Drag Illustrated which featured Project Six Pack, all the way through August, 1985.

The August, 1985 issue is an especially significant piece, written by Ted Struse, and outlines the history of the car, right back to the day it was purchased by him in 1969. In that final issue, Ted Struse hinted at the future for Project Six Pack, which was resting quietly in his garage in Colorado.

In the summer, 1990 issue of Mopar Muscle, Project Six Pack awoke from its long slumber and started a new life, stretching through Mopar Muscle and the pages of High Performance Mopar, through March, 2002. The final iteration of Project Six Pack was produced by a team of guys that is a virtual who's who of the Mopar high performance hobby: Herb McCandless, Ken Lazzeri & Russ Flagle produced an Indy Cylinder Head engine so close to perfect that it must be heard and felt to be believed. With 15:1 compression and a 7500 RPM shift point, this is not the early 1970's 440 6 Pack! Frank Lupo of Dynamic Converters and Lou Carbone, as the driver/mechanic also played a big hand in achieving a best run of 9.98 second run with the car.

For most of these guys, the ability to work with Ted Struse and Project Six Pack was a labor of love. For example, Frank Lupo's parents sponsored Project Six Pack when he was a child. Project Six Pack's transmission is now a 727 with a reverse pattern manual valve body, rollerized and lightened planetary assembly, rollerized rear support and a heavy-duty bolt in the sprag assembly. Other features include specialty lined bands, modified servos, extra capacity drum assembly, and relocated vent. The Dynamic convertor currently in the car stalls at approximately 6,000 RPM at sea level.

Also playing a huge part in the rebirth of Project Six Pack was Carl Solko, a talented mechanic and fabricator who built his own Project Six Pack many years earlier based on one of the original Super Stock Magazine articles. Other individuals who helped were Jim Zellner, Gary Gokey, Bob Stavik and Mike Motgard.

Project Six Pack was run more than 100 times with this new drive-train configuration and was featured prominently at national Mopar events through 2006. For a video of how this car performs as it sits today, check out:

As she sits today, Project Six Pack is an incredible piece of Mopar and muscle car era history. With only 12,526 original miles, Project Six Pack is the ONLY A12 Road Runner still titled to its original owner, per acknowledged Mopar expert Galen Govier.

While the original drive-train was destroyed long ago in the pages of Super Stock Magazine, the current drive train in Project Six Pack more than makes up for the original 440 engine and A833 4 speed manual transmission. The exotic pieces resting in the car now are just as historical as the originals, having been assembled by a who's who of Mopar performance history.

Project Six Pack retains all of its original factory sheet metal, including the original lift-off fiberglass hood. The original, un-restored undercarriage is nothing short of amazing. Perfect, rust free frame rails, original floor pans and original trunk pan. Some of the original factory details on the car leaving you shaking your head ... check out the original factory pencil markings on the underside of the deck lid!

The interior is incredibly clean and pristine. The original front bench seat comes with the car, as does the original 4 speed pistol grip shifter. The sill plates, door panels, dash pad, instrument cluster, headliner, rear seat and dash are all original. All of the trim and glass is original to the car, and in incredible condition, including the bumpers, grill, headlight bezels, door handles and side mirror. These items are un-restored.

The paint job is spectacular. Painted in 1972, and the repainted again in the original Rally Green & Lace, this car looks like it came straight out of the pages of Super Stock Magazine. Oh, that's right ... it did!

So let's go back to my original question: what makes a car truly rare? Based on the production numbers of the A12 lift-off hood cars, the racing heritage of this specific car, and it's unique place in the timeline of the Mopar performance world overFIVE DECADES, I submit that this is THE rarest A12 car in the world, and one of the most significant Chrysler muscle cars on the planet. This is a special car that defines the muscle era in a way that is completely unique from any other car produced by Chrysler from 1955 through 1974.

This past weekend, I watched Barrett-Jackson West Palm Beach and cringed every time the announcer shouted that they were "making history" because some car sold for some ridiculous amount of money. The kicker was the brand new Mustang GT500 KR, serial number blah-blah-blah. Those cars are over-priced pretenders and to refer to their sale as "making history" makes a mockery of what is truly historically significant. Project Six Pack IS history. Don't pass on this unique opportunity to become a steward of something which truly defines the words: rare & historical. This is one for the ages!

Please note that all sales are binding and final. Our cars are sold "as-is" with no warranty expressed or implied. Please carefully read the terms & conditions of the sale before bidding. Winning this auction does not entitle you to come inspect the car and decide if you want to buy it, but obligates you to complete the purchase! A $1000.00 deposit via PayPal is due within 24 hours of the auction close ... NO EXCEPTIONS.

We do not release our reserve prices, as this would be unfair to the other bidders, so please don't ask!

Note that our cars are on display in our showroom in Mentor, Ohio, in national print advertisements, listed for sale on our website, and listed for sale in multiple, nationally known, online dealer showrooms at all times. Since our cars are for sale in a number of other mediums, we reserve the right to cancel the auction at any time.

We do not base the price of our cars on what they bring in a single Ebay auction, nor do we discount the price of our cars based on Ebay auction activity. Accordingly, if you are interested in this, or any of our other vehicles, bid with the knowledge that we NEVER discount our cars if they don't reach their reserve in a single Ebay auction. Bid to win!!

This car can be inspected at our 17000 square foot facility in Mentor, Ohio, six days per week. For those of you who need to fly in, we can provide transportation to and from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. We can also provide accommodations within walking distance of our facility.

We can transport your vehicle to you in an enclosed carrier. Cost depends on mileage and location.

For those international buyers, note that we've shipped cars to Canada, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, London, Korea, Austria, Australia, Spain, Bahrain, Brazil, Denmark, Poland, UK, and Germany over the past 90 days. International buyers can feel confident in our representations, and post-sale service. We are more than happy to help your transport & shipping needs.

A common question we receive is: "do you accept trades"? We do accept trades, but will only consider #1 or #2 condition vehicles. If you would like us to review a trade, please send detailed pictures of the entire car, including the underside. Also send a detailed description which includes all specifications, facts, figures, history and documentation present with the car. Lastly, give us a clear idea of what you are seeking in trade value.

Best of Show Automotive, LLC has a valid Ohio Used Car Dealer's License. We have a full service facility, and perform complete restorations, as well as offer mechanical, electrical, service and engineering work to our customers. We own our 17,000 square foot facility in Mentor, Ohio, and have a significant investment in our business. We stand behind our work and value long-term relationships with our customers!

Check out our feedback from other customers who have purchased cars from us in the past. We pride ourselves on describing our cars accurately, and, our cars really do look better in person than in the pictures! Bid with confidence!

For further information, call us at: (440)350-1480. Email: doug.croxford@bestofshowautomotive.com.