Our car's story isn't very interesting, but is very special to us.
My father-in-law was the original owner of our 1968 GTS Dart. He rode around in his soon to be wife's cousin's GTS and wanted one. The MIL's cousin had a 383 in his, ours is the 340. After talking to the dealer, he said he wanted a red one. This was a tuesday and the dealer said a red one was due in on friday. He asked if it had a stripe and the salesman said "a white stripe down the side". He told the salesman that, that would be good since he didn't want it if it had the stripe around the back. On Friday, my father-in-law went down to Herb Gordon Dodge in Fairfax, Va. and there sat the GTS. He bought it that night, May 31, 1968. Three days later, he lost control of it and ran it into a ditch, bending something in the front end (this is why I'm looking for a lower control arm, passenger side). He never got it fixed and the front end has been out of alignment since. In 1969, an electric fuel pump was added due to the cam bolt backing out (from the factory). This fuel pump is still in the car! In about 1970, the 3.23 gears were replaced with 3.91's, suregrip. This car was washed DAILY due to him working at his fathers service station. He used it as a daily driver until about 1976 when he pulled the engine down for a rebuild (had about 75000 HARD miles.) At this time, an Isky 310 duration hydraulic cam was added (used), along with a edelbrock torker intake and 800 holley carb. and then just released chassis exit headers. The only problem durability wise he had with the car was once he bent a shifter fork in the transmission. I started dating his daughter in 1988 and began talking trash to him about how much faster my 1970 mustang was than his GTS. Heck, I didn't even know what a GTS was at the time. His daughter told me it was a GTS and I said "do you mean a GTO or GTX". By this time, the car was kept at his in laws house so I had never seen it. One friday night, I was at my girlfriend's house, in the family room, and I heard this car pull up along side the house at about 10 PM that sounded like it had a cam in it with square cam lobes. I said "what the hell is that?" Karen (my girlfriend) said "that's dad's car". Gulp! In came Arthur (my father in law), and with a very serious look on his face said "we need to go for a ride." Karen asked if she could go, but he said no. That was the ride of my life. Melting the tires off burnouts, powershifting every gear. I could not believe how much faster this car was than mine. Needless to say, we never raced.
Fast forward 4 years, I married his daughter. The Dart was only driven a couple times a year from about 1985 to the present. In January 2002, my wife had a baby boy. On mother's day of that year, he gave my wife the GTS. She had never driven it and by this time, I had only a couple of times. I taught her to drive it and on father's day of that year, we had the in laws up to our house. I told Arthur that Karen wanted to see him outside about something. You should have seen the look on his face to see the GTS backed out of the garage with his daughter in the driver's seat. She took him for a short ride and he still talks about it to this day. The GTS is very special to us as this is the car he had when he met his wife (the MIL). Unfortunately, she passed on last year at 53 of an unexpected heart attack. We try to take extra special care of the car because it means a lot to us.
We still have the original invoice in the glove box and EVERY state inspection sticker since new. I was talking to my wife about if the car still had the build sheet since the interior was changed from white to black in the early 70's (white was too hard to keep clean). My in laws were putting the seat belts back in for the back seat when my mother in law says "what's this old piece of paper doing under the springs of the back seat." I could not believe it was still there. My father in law is not big on keeping things original, so it was suprising to see that he didn't ditch it when he had the interior apart so long ago. When we got the car home, I pulled the rear seat bottom back out and got the build sheet. It isn't in good shape, but at least we have it.
Sorry if this is so long, just wanted to tell the story of our GTS. When I can figure out how to post pictures, I'll put some up.
