To keep Stiles Performance busy with customer’s work, Bill installed this rev-limiter to keep the engine out of the danger zone.
 A lot of Dusters were built with black bench seats; since this one was a road test vehicle it received white vinyl buckets to accent the black top and orange paint. |
The 1970 car also sports a 1971 grille now. In the evolutionary days of primitive Pro Stock racing, Bill did not plan to build an entirely new car for the ’71 season; he did the same thing a lot of other drivers did at the end of 1970 – he simply changed his car into a ‘71 edition. After all, the production Duster did not get any radical styling changes for 1971, and the primary difference on the 340 model was just a special grille and paint cues (340 Wedge callouts and black-out hood). Since Bill would need to fit some new pieces to the car, he got a new ‘71 grille and began cutting and fitting on the 1970 street car to get the new 1971 version to fit; it was all tried on this Duster before a wrench or saw touched the race machine. In the end, it was really nothing radical, but the street car was no longer what could be considered “stock” for a 1970 model.
 Hurst made the shifter, which worked fine in the A-bomber right off the showroom floor. |
It changed hands just once. In 1978, when son Bill II was old enough to drive, the teenager bought it from the ‘old man’ for a quick $1,000 in 1978. That’s not bad - for $1,147.60, pop had been driving around for eight years! Bill II drove it through his high school years and has subsequently hung onto the ‘family treasure’ since than. A printer by trade, we heard the story about the Duster during one of the York US30 Reunions (which the Stiles family used to help promote), and “the Bills,” Senior and II, brought it out for us to see.
Would it be considered a survivor, and restoration, or a time capsule? It still retains most of its original “as built” paint, interior, and driveline. Though not restored to OEM perfection, the engine has been blueprinted and rebuilt to stock specs, with a rev limiter added during the “learning days” of Bill II to keep the RPMs down and the rods inside the bores. The A833 four-speed crashbox and the tight 3.91 SureGrip rear (both original and unrestored) make it possible to still send the tires into smoke as it did in its road testing heydays.
The Bills – Bill Stiles and Bill Stiles II.
Now showing almost 83,000 miles on the odometer, Bill II doesn’t drive it around a whole lot, though it still makes the rounds in York on warm summer evenings. Instead, this car is now treasured as a street heirloom memory to the era when horsepower ruled Detroit. A road test car, famous drivers, Pro Stock proto-tester, and one-family ownership makes it Vitamin C healthy for sure!
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