Explain your username here --->

Back in the day (mid 90s) I had a slant six Dart and another guy in our group also named Mike had a 440 Duster (11 second car with full cage, mini tub, 3.91, etc).

People started calling us both Mike Mopar, but that causes obvious problems. One day a bunch of us were hanging out and someone called me Mike autopar. Everyone thought that was the most hilarious thing, so the name stuck. And 3000 because autopar was not available on most sites when I was signing up so I needed something random to add. The 3000 really means nothing.

But what is "Autopar" and why was that so funny? Up until about 20 years ago there were two brands of Chrysler replacement parts in Canada; Mopar and Autopar. Our PERCEPTION was that Mopar was the performance oriented / higher quality parts, and Autopar was the 2nd line stuff. So the slant 6 guy is called Autopar and the 440 guy is called Mopar.

Now the internet teaches us the truth. "Mopar" was trademarked in the US by Chrysler but never in Canada (I'm in Canada). When Chrysler tried to use Mopar in Canada they found it was too close to another trademark that already existed so they had to use something else in Canada, and "Autopar" was born. So it turns out Mopar and Autopar are the same parts packaged differently, one for the US and the other for Canada. At some point in the late 80s Mopar slowly started replacing Autopar in Canada, and now the Autopar brand is no longer a thing and hasn't been for many years.