How did you become addicted to MoPar?
Quite by accident really, or maybe I should say 'an accident.
It's November '69. My wife and I had just got married the previous August. I've just turned 21 and she's 19. We're living in 2-bedroom apartment and sharing 1 car between us. She's taken the car (a '64 Olds F85) to go to work and I didn't have school that day so I'm sleeping in. Some guy runs into the back of her as she's driving to work.
Helped along by the accident, we decide we need another car. My mom works at a Credit Union and tells us one of the members there needs to sell his car since he just joined the Navy and his parents won't keep up the payments for him while he's gone. All she knows is it's some kind of Dodge that he just bought new.
So we go to look at the car and there sits a 2-month old '69 Dart 340 Swinger, Charger Red, white stripe, Cragars, and I fall in love. We pick it up for $2500. Ran that car on the streets of SoCal as is for awhile and even ran a best of 14.28 at 98+mph at OCIR running G/Pure Stock.
Modified it over the next few years to the tune of aluminum manifold, headers, 850 Holley double-pumper (750 Holley DP kept running out of fuel), manual shift reverse pattern 727 built by Ray Alley of Engine Masters, 4.89 gearing. It was stout!
Then get the stupid idea to take it off the street and turn it into a 'real' race car to run NHRA Super Street on a 10.90 index.
End of story comes some years later after a divorce (kept the house, the kids, and the car). Several years later I re-marry and new wife doesn't have the race bug so I sell the car during a tough financial time.
2 years ago, the 20-year dead 'bug' bites again and I find another '69 Dart on eBay. Still in the build stages but it's gonna be almost as fun as my old Dart when (if) it ever gets done!
You can't ever kill the Mopar bug!!!
