Has anyone noticed how rare it is to see an A-Body for sale (on any internet site) that is 100% OEM factory correct? I'm not talking about bolt head markings and paint daubs but significant, visible features and options.
I see lots of nice cars but hardly any are correct for the year and model. I occasionally scan ads for 340 Dusters/Demons just because I like them. Most have major deviations from stock: '71 side stripes on other years. Dual scoops on Dusters. Rallye wheels on cars that never offered them. Engine compartments and trunks painted black.
The correctly restored B and E bodies seem to appear much more often. I'm not sure what this means and I don't object to modifications. I simply wish it was easier to find correct A-Bodies.
I'm actually going to disagree here. I've seen far more original condition A-bodies. Yeah, there are a lot of restored E-bodies out there that "look" factory, but if you look closer a lot of them are wearing options they didn't come with from the factory. I think the B/E guys just spend more money to hide their modifications.
I'm not a "factory correct" guy. I usually look for non-numbers cars, just because I don't want some purist to blame me for modifying an "original" car. And yet, I have a couple of A-bodies that were basically original when I bought them. Not restored back to original, but actually original. My butterscotch '71 GT was. Mostly original paint (one quarter paint blend from a long ago fender bender), all numbers matching drivetrain, original interior, suspension, brakes, AC, all of it. Bought it for $1,500 (on eBay!!!!) because it's just a boring 318 car, even though it's a 1 of ~1255 GT.
Same for my '74 Duster. All original paint when I bought it. Original interior, drivetrain, heck even had the original hub caps, pretty much no rust to speak of. Paid $2,500 for that one, it was almost 5 years after the GT and the body was cleaner. This is it basically as I bought it, a quick polish and a wheel swap.
So what's my point? Original condition A-bodies are still out there and relatively cheap to purchase. Yeah, my GT was 11 years ago now, and the Duster was almost 7. But they're still out there. As a guy that generally looks for non-factory cars, I have two that I bought cheap. So I dunno where you're looking, but they're out there. And in much higher numbers than B's and E's, because darn near all of those have been restored already. Plenty of resto-mod B's and E's too.
And yeah, too late on mine BTW. The Duster is now a '71 Demon clone with a 340 and a T56. The '71 GT is keeping its original drivetrain, so the major numbers will all match. But it got a full US Cartool chassis kit, BBP upgrade to disks, greatly improved suspension components, etc. I'd feel worse about the modification, but at the prices I paid no one really wanted them as they were originally. If I could have bought clean modified cars for those prices I would have. The GT will be fairly simple to take back to stock if someone really wanted to except for the frame connectors and things, but those should be on every musclecar. The DustDevil would be pretty hard to take back to original, but I don't see too many people crying about original /6 '74 Dusters. Or paying anything for them either.