Barry Lee is brilliant. The motorcycle dealer from Jacksonville, Florida, disguised a barn-finding adventure as a romantic weekend with his wife at a casino in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Lee had heard of a rare and desirable Plymouth Superbird behind a house in Alabama, which he could visit en route.
“I told my wife we would go gambling over Christmas,” said Lee. “She was all for it!”
Lee’s profession is two-wheelers, but his passion is very fast four-wheelers of the Mopar variety. He had already owned a number of big-block ’Cudas, Super Bees and Challengers, but his dream was for one of Chryslers high-winged models: the Superbird or its cousin, the Dodge Daytona, cars designed to compete on NASCAR’s superspeedways with drivers like Richard Petty and Bobby Allison.
He heard from an unreliable source about a Superbird that had been sitting behind a house near the Gulf Coast since 1975.
After a terrific holiday weekend of gambling, the happy couple drove through the coastal Alabama town and to the address where the automotive treasure was supposedly sitting.
The house was obviously abandoned, and the property was littered with old trucks and cars, but there was no Superbird. Lee was beginning to think his friend was pulling his leg when his wife noticed an orange object inside a nearby bush. When her husband pushed aside the branches, it revealed the car of this dreams—a bright orange, 1970 Plymouth Superbird. Parked in the same location for three decades, a hedge had actually engulfed the car.
Find the hidden Superbird! At first, Barry Lee didn’t even see the car he had heard about in an Alabama yard. It had been parked behind a house for nearly 30 years, and eventually the hedge grew up around it. BARRY LEE
Parked in a barn near Lee’s house in Jacksonville, Florida, the car reveals its rough condition. Even the firewall has cancer. Yet Lee looks forward to the ultimate restoration.
All those years parked in the salty, humid air near the Alabama coast took its toll on the rare Plymouth. According to Lee, nearly every metal panel needs repair or replacement. BARRY LEE
Lee found out who owned the house and called the phone number. “Whenever I called and said I was interested in the car, the person on the other end hung up the phone,” said Lee.
It turns out the elderly owner, Frank Moran, whose wife was in a nursing home, lived nearby with his daughter.
So Lee’s wife stepped in again and suggested they simply write a letter that stated their desire to remove the car from the elements and restore it like new.
At least a year passed before Lee received a surprise phone call from Frank’s son-in-law, George Proux.
“Frank fell and is in the hospital,” Proux said. “I have power-of-attorney and had all the cars and trucks hauled off before I found your letter.
“The Superbird is sitting at my house in Jacksonville, Florida.”
What a coincidence that it should actually be just a few miles from Lee’s own house.
Lee carefully inspected the car. It was equipped with a numbers-matching 440 cubic-inch engine, automatic transmission and bench seat, and still wore its original Goodyear Wide Oval tires on rally rims.
It was one of only 1,920 Superbirds that year, and incredibly, this one had less than 1,000 miles on it.
The son-in-law had planned to restore the car, but after surveying the severe rust damage, he reconsidered.
Lee arrived at just the right moment: he had driven his own 1970 lime-green Road Runner, which attracted Proux’s attention.
The two traded cars and Lee now owns possibly the lowest-mileage Superbird on the planet. A major restoration in in progress.
