Minnesota Motorhead

If anyone has given up on the idea of building a gas-guzzling, tire-shredding muscle car in this age of four-buck-a-gallon gas, it isn’t Chuck Chenvert.

His blindingly green, stupidly powerful and completely uneconomical ’69 Plymouth Road Runner was built to be driven — far.

Chenvert piloted the car on the entire Hot Rod Magazine Power Tour this year, winding thousands of miles from his home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, to the starting point in Little Rock, Arkansas, to the end in Madison, Wisconsin, and back. That’s quite a feat considering the car runs a 440ci big block (bored and stroked to 492ci, actually) and a four speed. And the fact that Chenvert opted to leave out power steering and air conditioning.

“Being that it was a car designed before air conditioning was common, it has floor vents, so driving was never a problem,” he said.

The garage-built street machine averaged about 10 mpg on the trip, but Chenvert made it the whole way with a smile glued to his face. His car’s 471 hp and 607 lb.-ft. of torque, proven on an engine dyno, probably helped.

Chenvert, 42, is a medical device engineer by trade, but a car guy to the core. He’s a fan of muscle cars of all makes and models, but he’s got a thing for Road Runners in particular.

“Growing up, my neighbor had one across the street in ‘69,” he said. “And I’ve been a fan ever since.”

He spotted his Road Runner in a newspaper ad in 2000 after a couple years of searching. It was an Arizona car, but was in rough shape, sprayed many shades of primer, with a dented fender and rust at the bottom of the rear window corners and in the trunk. But the quarter panels were solid and there was more than enough to work with.

Chenvert spent five years, mostly during the summer, transforming the car into what it is today. He built a rotisserie from plans he found online and stripped the car completely.

“I spent a whole summer doing body work,” he said.

The car came with a 383ci mill, but Chenvert opted to upgrade to the 440 with aluminum heads, a big cam, an Edelbock single-plain intake and a 950 cfm Holley carb. Why?

“Things just kind of got out of hand,” he said.

A five-speed manual transmission was originally on Chenvert’s list, but it turned out to be too expensive, plus he said he likes the look of the four on the floor.

His mighty Mopar puts power to the street through, what else, a new Dana 60 rear end holding 3.54 gears. It handles better than it ever did in the ‘60s thanks to a completely redone suspension with polyurethane bushings, a redone K-member, front and rear sway bars, Hemi front torsion bars, heavy duty Mopar springs and KYB gas shocks.

American Racing’s always good-looking Torque Thrust II wheels and Nitto rubber keep the car glued to the road.

The black interior is new, too, outfitted with Corbeau seats, Autometer gauges, a gigantic Hurst shifter and a full cage with removable side bars to make getting in and out easier.

“Someday I might race it and it does stiffen it up because these were unibody cars,” Chenvert said about the cage. “And it’s just kind of a cool factor.”

The car was originally light metallic green, but Chenvert was set on one of two famous high impact colors: Plum Crazy or Sublime. He ended up going with an updated version of the latter, called Sunfire Green, which he sprayed himself.

Chenvert said the Road Runner ran flawlessly on the Power Tour. An aluminum radiator and an electric fan pulled from a Nissan Maxima kept the big engine below 180 degrees the whole way, he said.

The only changes he’s planning is the addition of power steering and maybe a suspension upgrade to better handle luggage and a couple passengers on the next long haul.

Chenvert documented his 2,400-mile journey last June on a blog appropriately named Loud Green Car. Check it out here.

September 2nd, 2008 | Articles, Car Features, Plymouth