The ultimate handling mod for an old muscle car

Iain Kelly

Contributing Journalist

2 min read

We all know muscle cars were never any good in corners, and modern cars have made their handling almost comical today. So what do you do if you want a corner-carving high-performance car for track days, but only have a clapped out old Plymouth Duster in the shed?  You buy a wrecked 2007 sixth-generation Corvette, cut the body off and stuff the good bits under the old body, just like Gordie Rutkowski did to his '73 Duster!

Rutkowski has owned the base model Plymouth for over 30 years, upgrading the stock slant 6-pot to a V8 and giving it a street machine treatment in the early '80s. He took it off the road in 1987 for a paintjob which was never done, and didn’t come back to it for almost three decades. He discovered the wheelbase of a C6 Corvette and the Plymouth were very similar, so he bought a wrecked 2007 'Vette with the Z51 performance pack, made up a custom chassis, upgraded the struts with Ride Tech coilovers, and then fitted the body on top.

After debuting the car at the 2017 Holley LS Fest East Gordie reports he has no problems keeping up with, or beating, modern Z06 Corvette supercars!

Iain Kelly is the lover of rad-handling muscle machines behind The Creators Online.

Iain Kelly

Contributing Journalist

A love of classic American and European cars drove Iain Kelly to motoring journalism straight out of high school, via the ownership of a tired 1975 HJ Holden Monaro.  For nearly 20 years he has worked on magazines and websites catering to modified late model high-performance Japanese and European tuner cars, as well as traditional hot rods, muscle cars and street machines. Some of these titles include Auto Salon, LSX Tuner, MOTOR, Forged, Freestyle Rides, Roadkill, SPEED, and Street Machine. He counts his trip to the USA to help build Mighty Car Mods’ “Subarute” along with co-authoring their recent book, The Cars of Mighty Car Mods, among his career highlights.  Iain lends his expertise to CarsGuide for a variety of advice projects, along with legitimising his automotive obsession with regular OverSteer contributions. Although his practical skills working on cars is nearly all self-taught, he still loves nothing more than spending quality time in the shed working on his project car, a 1964 Pontiac. He also admits to also having an addiction to E30 BMWs and Subaru Liberty RS Turbos, both of which he has had multiple examples of. With car choices like that, at least his mum thinks he is cool.
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