Kurt's Cars - 1970 Plymouth Satellite

1970 Plymouth Satellite | 318/Automatic | Purchased: March, 1982 | Sold: Summer, 1985

Another installment highlighting one of Kurt's varied vehicular veterans...today's post is a car that I would hunt down and buy all over again if I had the chance. You will find out later why this isn't possible.

I have always liked Plymouth Road Runners; Sherry will attest to this, and continuously razzes me over my love for late 60s/early 70s Mopar products. Simply put, she calls a vehicle from that era "A Kurt Car." Hey, I'll admit it...I grew up in the Seventies, when Road Runners and Dodge Super Bees were about $600 each and plentiful like dandelions. They were the strip-brawling rough edged rulers of the streets at the time. Word was you never lined up with a rusty Charger in Ballard. Period. Not worth the cash in your wallet to even tempt fate. Might have been a lot of huff n puff at the time, but I knew no one willing to try.

A high school friend had a 1969 Road Runner that I liked very much. I had been offered a couple of those $600 cars but to insure one was darn near impossible for me. So when I saw this 318-powered Satellite on a car lot for $700, I just couldn't resist. Yes, the rear end was jacked up into the atmosphere for no reason, but I could work around the stinkbug stance and get different shocks to drop it down.

From the get go, the Satellite was all bark/no bite. The 318 was tired and still had 2-barrel carburetion. After running some tests on the engine, me and my Road Runner buddy determined I had a couple of flat cam lobes. He had a 340 cam that he was willing to give me, and he was willing to do the work in auto shop at school. Hey, what the heck!

Now, I'm not exactly sure how it got to this point, but he pulled the engine. Then he lost the keys. The car was transported around the auto shop for 3 weeks on a floor jack until the shop teacher got tired of looking at it. So I got the Plymouth back in pieces. I hadn't even owned the car two months at that point.

During the summer of 1982 I schemed on how I could put the car back together. Not only had my Road Runner buddy taken the engine out, he had taken it apart as well. I had boxes of engine parts and not a lot of expertise in drive train stuff so I felt a bit lost. Since the engine and trans were out I considered dropping in a 383 or larger, but decided against since a major portion of the front end would have to be converted to a "Big Block K-Member." I then considered putting in a 340 or a 360 since each would bolt in where the 318 used to reside. So many ideas and so little experience....

In the end, I had the 318 built on a dare. Someone told me I couldn't get any power out of a 318 and that it was a waste of time. After talking with guys at Jim Green's Automotive in Lynnwood, we determined that the 318 was worth one horse per cubic inch if built right. The potential of 320 horsepower was plenty for me so I did it. Jim Green's built the motor as follows:

1970 318 block bored .030"
Forged flat-top pistons
Forged `68 318 crank
Balanced internals
Competition Cams Hi-Energy 268 Degree
Edelbrock Performer Manifold
1971 340 heads


A couple of wrecking yard visits and a trip to a swap meet got me a 8 3/4" rear differential, some axles, and a set of 3.91:1 gears. I cleaned up the 904 TorqueFlite and installed a shift kit. Once all the parts were together and the engine was broken in, I knew I had something good. It was fast, it was tight, and the engine had more power than I knew how to use. It didn't have the raw grunt of my 429 Fairlane, but it had lots of usable torque above 3000 rpm and broke the tires loose going into second and third gears. Heck, it even passed the emissions test. An added benefit is that it got TWICE the gas mileage of my Fairlane, even with the low gearing! Plymo was the first car I owned that was actually looked on favorably at car shows and club meetings. Plus that, chicks dug it big time.

I spent the better part of 1984 working out a lot of bugs. Luckily the body was pretty decent, with the exception of the front left corner. When the power steering box started leaking like a sieve, I converted it to a manual box. I then added bucket seats, installed Sport Satellite tail lights and grill, and drove it constantly. I got the car painted white and the green top dyed black. A friend installed a stereo for me, and within two days it was stolen. I never did put a radio back in.

One day at the gas station a man approached me and said he was the previous owner. During the buildup I had decoded the body tag for the car and had a question for him: why did this car have a six-cylinder body number but a V8 engine under the hood? He couldn't explain it, saying it was a 318 all the time they owned it. He said it had been the property of an elderly lady in North Bend prior to that. His story rang true, because the license plate was OMG 470, only two numbers off from plates my Dad had purchased in North Bend for our 1966 Dodge Coronet in 1969 - OMG 468. Why I remember that, I'll never know.

Things started going downhill eventually. In late 1984 I lost the turn signals. Then I lost the brake lights. Then I lost second gear. Then I floated an intake valve at 95 mph (yeah, I know....DUMB). Then I lost my job. With no job, no money to fix the car, and so many problems surrounding me, I was forced to take the only solution at my disposal -- sell the car and drive our family's spare `76 Vega. Everyone I talked with wanted parts of the car but nobody wanted the whole car. So, enterprising as can be, I parted it out. The differential went to a friend's `68 Charger, the engine went to a friend's `78 Dodge Power Wagon, the car body went to another friend (pushed to his house by my trusty Vega), and the Sport Satellite stuff stayed with me. In the late 1990s I sold the grill to a man in Colorado for $150. I have no idea what happened to my tail lights.

And now, the reason why I'll never find this car again.

In mid-1986 I got a call from an old girlfriend. "Kurt, you better go look at your old Plymouth." I drove by a gutted and burned out 1970 Satellite. The story goes like this: the guy who bought the car had a brother whose local reputation was less than stellar. He had enemies, many of them, who had no qualms about popping a cap in the back of his head. One night while driving his brother's righteous wheels (my old car), he became involved in a car chase with said enemies. He made it home and ran into the house, only to have his enemies set the car on fire. Sadly, he was later killed as a result of his violent and seedy lifestyle.

The car was a total loss and its loss was a total waste. I wish I could have held onto it just a bit longer, but the problems it had were too great for me to handle with no job or money. Plymo is one of the only cars that I would buy back. I have looked around for another and they cost far more than $700 now, if a guy can find one at all. Most are trashed Road Runners that are $6000+. Plain two-door Satellites - after nearly 40 years - simply don't exist north of California any longer for any price.

Maybe someday, but not if Sherry has anything to say about it!