This is one of 1243 340/Auto Road Runners built in 1971.  We found this car sitting behind a barn not 10 miles from my place, original engine and trans long gone.  Actually, a good friend of mine was tipped off about the car, and he bought it as a possible parts car.  I helped him pull it from behind the barn, where it had been sitting for about 4 years.  Once we had it up on the trailer, I was able to check out the bottom of the car, which was in suprizingly good shape.  After we got it home, and I was able to go over it better I found that it did indeed have good frame rails, floor pans, trunk floor and a lot of other decent parts.  A nice bonus was finding the correctly date coded (probably the original) exhaust manifolds in the trunk.  I wound up buying the car from my buddy, and I have plans to eventually restore this one.

As you can see from the pic's, it's going to need some major attention to the driver's quarter panel, possibly to the extent of replacing it.  There is rot in the cowl area, and a lot of surface rust in the entire engine bay all of which looks to be fixable.  It originally was a Sno White car with a Sherwood Green bench seat interor.  At some point, it was converted (not a high quality conversion, but a conversion none the less) to a black bucket seats with console setup.

It has taken it's place in the project lineup, after the 4spd car's body and interior work is done, but definately before the Hemi conversion.  I'll keep the buckets/console setup, but I think it would look really good with the black and white houndstooth cloth inserts.  Otherwise I plan to stick very close to the fender tag.  I'll search for the original drive train, but I really don't have great hopes of finding it.  So, I'll probably look for a 71 vintage 340 to stuff between the fenders, but a crate 360 made up to look like a 340 is a possibility too.

Well, long story short, I've decided to reduce my project inventory.  This car, being quite the way down the list of projects, had earned itself a eBay auction and has left the fold.  Hopefully the new owner will have better luck getting around to doing something with the car than I did...

The Fender Tag Reads

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