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.