My friends,
Recently I went to Mr. Michel's home & garage, talked to him a lot about his Dodge passion and he showed us some great pics & old stuff taken on the Seventies...We scanned these pics and I decided to share with you, fellas !!
Mr. Michel used to do repair some old & classic cars and he started doing this in the early Forties, when there weren't many resources he could find, in that time and even now...
A great example on his criativity to make some car conversions show on one of these jobs in an almost destroyed by accident 1923 Dodge that turned to be a small truck:
After that and lots of work he could manage to buy another great car, a 1950 Dodge Kingsway Custom Sedan that was used by the local government agency for almost a decade and came to the garage in a very bad shape condidtion indeed...Here's the result of the meticulous restoration that Mr. Michel made on his property, and we have to say that Dodges in the Fifties are very scarce in Brazil because people here prefered the Fords & Chevys among the options...
Here's Mr. Michel with his caring baby:
A look inside the car reveals how much details could be seen, even a fake wood-paint on the dash using only brushes !!
And now we can see both the 50' Dodge and the 70' green Dart next to it, this one was recently returning to use, at that time it was recently bought !!!
Here we can see the same 50' Dodge on a local parade hometown late in the sixties with Mr. Michel behind the wheel:
By 1994 Mr. Michel received a big offer to sell his beloved Dodge to a local collector and he decided that it was time to go...Here's a colour shot on the Dodge the day it was delivered with Mr. Michel and his wife:
As I told before, in the Seventies Mr. Michel as a very skilled and talented mechanic was responsible to give maintenance to all kind of classic cars and his customers started buying more "modern" local production products like Chevy Opala, Ford Galaxie and the Dodge Darts...He decided to make a task force partnership with a local Dodge dealer and helped with his fantastic work. Here's some pictures taken by 1975 showing some of his customer's cars being revised on the garage:
In the difficult times of the second world war gasoline was very scarce here, so the local mechanics decided to convert some cars to use gas-generated by combustion apparels, with wood and coal, I don't know how's the name of this in english, but here we used to call "gasogenio" on these apparatus.
Mr. Michel decided to produce some on his own and was very successful on that matter, and after almost 25 years he did a special one hanging behind a 1970 Dodge Dart as an experiment, here's a picture of this car:
This Dart was sold in the Eighties and the gas-generated equipment was kept to remember how tough were those days...Here's Mr. Michel with his creation:
Today we can contemplate Mr. Michel stories and share all his knowledge with us, lucky guys...
Here's a shot of the front of his home & garage, a 1940's building projected & made by himself !!
And inside this place...Some rarities sleep, waiting for the day they will see the light again...
The 1976 Dodge Charger R/T, stored since 1988
A 1970 Dodge Dart, another brother, sleeping since 1987
This one was the luckiest guy: a 1971 Dodge Dart Coupé,a private property for more than thirty years serving the Michel family, still on use after all these years...
Here's my humble homage to this extraordinary man that still sparkle the Mopar flame in our hearts...Thank you very very much, Mr. Michel !!!
