For most, owning a rare factory-built race car relic from the 1960’s would be a dream made reality, and it certainly would be the centerpiece of nearly any collection, but for Minnesota classic muscle car restorer Fred Engelhart, it’s just another prize in a long line of historic machines that have come and gone through his shop.

Engelhart, who has owned some of the most iconic factory drag racing machines ever built at one time or another — or in some cases, multiple times, as he shares — has hung onto this one, a 1964 Plymouth factory lightweight Super Stocker with a 426 Hemi for power, longer than most. Now, after more than two decades, he’s put the fully-operational racer up for sale, although he admits it’s not without hesitation.

“I hate selling it,” Engelhart says. “I had plans to race it again, but I’m 64 years old, and I have to think about that, and the economy has been a little slow for me the last year or so, so I’m thinking maybe it’s time. In a perfect world, I’d keep it forever. I want to sell it, but on the same token, I don’t want to sell it,” he says with a laugh.

Engelhart, certainly an authority on the subject given his vast hands-on experience with the early muscle cars and drag racing machines, believes this very car is one of just five or six remaining quality examples of the factory lightweight Plymouths left in existence, out of the 30 to 40 that were built in 1964. And, having owned many factory lightweight Chrysler, Ford, Pontiac, Chevrolet, and AMC race cars over the years — including a whole pile of the ’68 factory Hemi cars, early Max Wedge Mopars, cars owned by Dick Landy, Ronnie Sox, Bob Lambeck, Butch Leal and many others — he’s convinced the ’64 Hemi Plymouth is the finest such machine to roll out of Detroit. “The ’64 lightweight Plymouth is probably my all-time favorite car, hands down,” Engelhart says. “I like a lot of other stuff, and I’ve had a lot of different cars, but this one is my favorite.”

This particular car, according to Engelhart, was originally sold in the Baltimore, Maryland area and has been through a handful of owners, including Vern Rowley, who held a pair of national records with it in the 1970’s. It later ended up in the hands of an owner in Kentucky before Engelhart, in the market for a ’64 lightweight, found it and hot-footed his way down to buy it in the late 1990’s before anyone else got ahold of it.

Upon buying the car, Engelhart took it to racecar builder Joe Smith in Dallas, Texas to build the chassis, which is centered around what is still very much an original Plymouth factory car — all of the original sheet meal is intact, and the complete interior including the door panels, seats and brackets, aluminum components, front and rear window, and exterior trim (grill, tail lights, and bumpers) are all entirely original. The car was set up for Super Stock/B Automatic competition, where Engelhart has pushed it into the 9.30-second range in NHRA competition (it’s been 8.80’s with a bigger-cube motor in it). The car still had the factory wheel tubs in it when Engelhart made the purchase, and he installed the aftermarket tubs to fit the larger tires used in modern-day Super Stock competition.

The ’64 lightweights, like many of the cars intended for racing duty of the time, were stripped of many of their road-going features — these cars sported lightweight thin steel front bumpers, single headlight grille assemblies, hood pins in place of the hood hinges, aluminum doors with no arm rests, lightweight bucket seats and the removal of the rear seat, lightweight Corning brand door and quarter glass, and other features intended for all-out performance on the 1/4-mile.

The car is powered by a fresh Harry Holton-built 426 Hemi and backed by a Chrysler 904 Pro Trans, and sports a host of modern pieces, including a lightened spool, gun-drilled axles, Lamb aftermarket brakes, and Koni shocks, with liberal use of titanium hardware throughout in order to get it as light as possible. Of course, these cars are already relatively light to begin with, given  the use of aluminum for the front end and doors, as the factory lightweight name implies.

“There’s maybe half a dozen or so good ’64 lightweights left in the whole country, between restored and non-restored ones, and with the exception of one or two, most had to have floors put in them, and most were back-halved. With the ‘64s, a ton of them had the wheelbase altered, because of the ’65 cars coming out.

Engelhart has listed his prized ride at a lofty $185,000 on eBay, and considering it’s rarity and the degree of original parts and pieces still in like-new condition, it’s hard to argue that the price just might be right. After all, this could well be one of the two or three finest such cars left in existence, and that’s not something one can say about too many makes and models of vehicles in today’s restoration-rich market.