photo #9379817

Somewhere on Interstate 40 in New Mexico, a patrolman named Rex Sagel pulled over a Ferrari doing 169 mph. His radar maxed out at 150, so the ticket he wrote was proof the speedometer had simply run out of numbers before the car did. The vehicle he was driving was a genuine Plymouth Superbird, nicknamed the Blackbird, that the state had confiscated and quietly put into highway patrol service. It needed only seven miles of open desert to reel the Ferrari in.That story inspired this tribute. Builders started with a four-door 1970 Plymouth Satellite sedan, added a fiberglass Superbird nosecone and a towering rear wing on steel braces, painted it in black-and-white highway patrol livery, and stenciled "200 MPH Police Interceptor" across the fenders in case anyone missed the reference. The Road Runner beep-beep horn is still functional.The original Blackbird was eventually sold off and passed through several owners before its trail went cold, which means this Satellite tribute may be the closest thing to the real story that most people will ever sit in.