Ever search for a past car and regret?

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DionR

DionR

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Ever wonder what has happened to a car you used to own did a search? And then wished you hadn't?

I sometimes get curious about certain cars from my past. Some I don't care about, some I know they ended up in a JY or scrapped because I took them myself, and then their are the cars I wished I hadn't sold or just had a warm spot in my heart that I wondered about.

Had a red '89 LeBaron GTC T2/5M car I really enjoyed and had a bunch of memories of but sold as it wore out. Found it in the local Pull and Save yard like a year after I sold it, all painted rattle can black and beat to death. They even painted the trim and just half-assed scrapped the glass clean. That one was a weird deal as the "buyer" didn't show and a "friend" bought it with cash and they never transferred the title. I think someone was hiding from the law or child support payments or something.

But the most recent one was when I searched on my '15 Challenger R/T out of curiosity yesterday.

Bought it August 12, 2017 with about 5500 miles looking like this:

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Sold it August 21, 2020 with 29000 miles looking the same but with the 8.4 UConnect upgrade. Drove it from Spokane to Helena, Mt to sell it to a dealership there which was a great send off.

Yesterday I found it looking like this with 49K miles:

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Looks like it got totaled in Oregon about 10/2023.

Also found it listed at Tonkin in Portland, but can't see the ad to see when, how much or what it looked like then. I found a place that would give me the full history of the car for $6 or $8, which is better than $45 from Carfax, but I don't think I will do that.

I didn't do a search looking to see if I could get it back, but I can't say I am glad to see it ended like that. It really was a great car, very basic beyond the 8.4 screen I upgraded it to, fun to drive and I like how clean it was in the silver. Really wish I hadn't sold it, it is the benchmark and drive behind doing my G3 swapped car.

Ah well.
 
Yep. My first '70 Dart 340 Swinger. Bought it with 30,000 miles on it. Drove it 2 years then the Arab oil embargo happened. Gas shot up in price. Sold it to a friend of a friend. Tracked it down about 4 years later in a junkyard. Wheel wells cut out with a saw. Hood gone. The entire drivetrain missing. Maybe the engine, 4 speed or 3.55 8 3/4 SG survived and are living well in another car!
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DartManPlum340 said:
Yep. My first '70 Dart 340 Swinger. Bought it with 30,000 miles on it. Drove it 2 years then the Arab oil embargo happened. Gas shot up in price. Sold it to a friend of a friend. Tracked it down about 4 years later in a junkyard. Wheel wells cut out with a saw. Hood gone. The entire drivetrain missing. Maybe the engine, 4 speed or 3.55 8 3/4 SG survived and are living well in another car!
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My expectation is the same. Car probably got bought and stripped by a yard so the drivetrain and such probably lives on.
 
These cars were throw aways at one time. I saved mine from a field but it would have definitely went to a boneyard etc. Its a 70 swinger and I remember being a dumb kid and approached the guy about the 340 engine. he said "I want to sell it as a whole package" I said "How much ya want...?" rest is history.
 
I had a 70 Pink 4 Speed TA back in 75-79 time frame.
A guy had a message on many forums asking about who owned this car.
It was a picture taken at Suffolk raceway when I was racing it.
StanSuffolk.jpg

I contacted him and told the story of when I owned it.
He wants to restore it soon.
My TA Today 2.JPG

I sold it to put a down payment on my first house.
I miss that one.
 
My first GTS, a '68 340 4 spd.
Did all the usual hotrod stuff to it in my teen years, raced it for a while, then decided to restore it. Still had most of the original parts, and what I didn't have I was still able to get or track down. Absolutely loved that car.
Then life bit me in the a$$ and I had to sell most everything in order to keep my house and a roof over my kids' heads.
A number of years later I went looking for it and found out the kid who bought it wrapped it around a tree, and it was sitting in his backyard. Bought back what was left (it wasn't salvageable) and stripped out what I could, hoping to find a suitable shell so it's heart and soul could live on. Still hunting; the '67-'69 shells I find have gotten ridiculous.
 
Professor Fate said:
My first GTS, a '68 340 4 spd.
Did all the usual hotrod stuff to it in my teen years, raced it for a while, then decided to restore it. Still had most of the original parts, and what I didn't have I was still able to get or track down. Absolutely loved that car.
Then life bit me in the a$$ and I had to sell most everything in order to keep my house and a roof over my kids' heads.
A number of years later I went looking for it and found out the kid who bought it wrapped it around a tree, and it was sitting in his backyard. Bought back what was left (it wasn't salvageable) and stripped out what I could, hoping to find a suitable shell so it's heart and soul could live on. Still hunting; the '67-'69 shells I find have gotten ridiculous.
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Man, it's all ridiculous. I wish you luck in your search.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Yeah kinda. I found one of my old cars totalled out in a junkyard once.
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Sort of the same story here.
My first car was a 69 Dart 2dr 318. I ran into a buddy about a year after I sold it. He said he saw it in a self service junkyard looking the same as when I sold it. No crash damage or any obvious reason for being there. He said he got the taillights out of it.
My mom had a 79 Z 28 that the parents bought new. By 1984, they sold it to buy mom a newer car. I was sad to see that car go. By 1986 or so, I saw it on jackstands in a poor part of town. The paint was badly faded and it looked terrible.
That was like seeing the Prom Queen 8 years after graduation and she is now fat and ugly.
 

I put a post in lost & found on here to see if anyone knew where my 70 Duster from high school is, but I doubt it will ever turn up. I'd kind of like to know what ever happened to my 69 Firebird 400 Ram Air 3 four speed also. That was one helluva car! I traded it for a pickup in 1977 when I started dating this chick who was into horses and a very good barrel racer. I just HAD TO HAVE something to pull a horse trailer with! :realcrazy: :BangHead:
 
LOL, I grew up in Spokane, parents still have the farm in Greenbluff.

I occasionally look up my 2010 Challenger RT. I just finished dropping about 14 Grand into it (392 cam, SRT headers, full tune to 460ish HP, all new suspension, etc) before I got ran over 2 years ago and had to sell it. It had the exterior appearance package which included the old school TA snorkel style Hood and rear wing. I love and miss that car. I found it about a year ago at a dealership, then it's disappeared and I haven't seen it since.

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Yes, I have sellers remorse with every Mopar that I’ve ever sold. Which is many. I have only looked for my 71 and 72 340 swingers. I found 1 still under a tarp in the back of the garage to the guy I sold it to. It was a bittersweet moment. I was gonna ask him to sell it back to me but I know I can’t give it the love it deserves. Nothing done to it as of a few years ago. Same old story though, I’ll get to it some day. It hasn’t seen the light of day since 1981. He said he sometimes wondered what happened to the young guy that sold him the car. Kim
 
My original 1968 AMX drag car. Bought it in 1979 from the long close Jax Speed Shop in Jacksonville, FL when I was on active duty with the Navy. It was basically the body, with a boat anchor chevy 350, a nicely built Turbo 400 and a 31 spline 9 inch Ford rear. No lights, no trim, no bumpers. Interior was largely intact except for no carpet and only the drivers seat. Spent the next couple of years making it look like a real AMX again. By this time I was stationed in Maryland racing at Maryland International Raceway. Got tired of the gross inconsistency of the 13 second 350 and was ready to sell the car. A guy who ran a Super Pro 69 AMX full chassis car there sold me a 71 401 engine complete, along with a fully race prepped 727. It was the deal of the century as he sold me the pair for only $800! This was in the Fall of 1981. Did the swap, sold the 350 and turbo 400 for considerably more money which was good as the car went from running mid 13s to 11.0s. Had to put a cage in the old girl then. And that's how the car was when I sold it in the spring of 1995 after I retired from the Navy here in Maine and found out my youngest daughter was on the way. Got out of racing entirely until 2019 when I decided to jump back in. Decided to try to find my old AMX as I had sold it to a guy in New Hampshire. Using a couple of racing blogs got in touch with the current owner pretty quickly. Went to Tamworth, NH area to look at it and it was like re-uniting with a long lost family member, and it was disappointing as the car had been sitting in a trailer for 9 years. Verified that it was my old car via the VIN. It was in fairly decent condition from what I could see. It had been tubbed and back-halfed at some point, along with a lot of other chassis upgrades. The engine for it was in the guys garage on a stand but looked like it had been left outdoors for 9 years. Unfortunately a deal couldn't be put together for me to buy it back as the guy wanted stupid money for it. It would have been great to have it back and restore it to track ready condition again, but it would have taken more time and money than I had available at the time. If I ever decide to part with the Arrow, perhaps I'll pursue it again.

AMX.jpg
 
We built a 1968 Coronet R/T 440 4 gear. It was a clone done in the early 80's. We had a complete R/T for parts...bulge hood all the trim. The only thing we left from the 440 options were the dash and gauges as they were incredibly nice. We painted it Electric blue with white vinyl top and hand painted a wraparound stripe. Crushed velvet interior which was a common thing back then. I sold it for $2500 to a younger neighbor for college tuition and fees. It burnt to the ground in a garage fire several years later before I had money to buy it back. I still have the R/T parts car front fenders in my barn. I will be listing them this summer. It took my friend Steven Gossett and I two years to build the thing. That was my first complete restoration. It still sickens me that it was destroyed. I can remember Donnie Lenz the owner of the Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Dealership in that era complimenting Steven and I at how the car turned out...and cautioning us not to wrap it around a tree.
 
Bought and sold manyyy over the past 15 years. Some to drive just for a season, some to repair and sell to finance my addiction, to buying more cars. Two cars come to mind. One, a '70 Dart stroker, 4-speed, I sold to a guy here a few years ago, who resold it last year. And, (hold your hats) a '70 Nova with a 383, that drove like it was on rails. The guy who had it prior to me did some great work with the suspension. The car was the best driving muscle car I have ever had. Sold it to a guy in Denver, wish I hadn't.

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Not a car I owned, but one I wanted. I was 16, a buddy and me got jobs at a horse farm a week before they were going to have a big horse show. Under a tree on the property was a 69.5 a12 Superbee, orange, with a 4 speed and a black interior. I wanted it, bad. I asked if it was for sale, not only was it for sale for $400, but I could work off the price. We worked all week busting our asses, 100’s of feet of stockade fencing around the show arena, digging holes for the porta John’s, baling and putting up hay, weeding and mowing, and all manner of other tasks. When Friday came they pod us our first weeks wages….$20! The horseshoe was the next day, we met up town on Friday night, all dejected about the low wages, and we both vowed never to go back. 6 months later I went by the farm, it was abandoned and the Bee was gone. Never saw it again, but found out that the family moved to Missouri and started a commune.
 
DionR said:
Cool! When was that?



That’s what I wanted to do to my Challenger, plus the 392 intake. I think that is how they should have from the factory.
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Graduated 1990, left in '95, boomeranged back in '99, left again for CO in '08 during the downturn. My '70 Barracuda that I'm almost finished restoring was my dad's that he bought in '73 and parked in the back 20 acres around '87.
 
ec_co said:
Graduated 1990, left in '95, boomeranged back in '99, left again for CO in '08 during the downturn. My '70 Barracuda that I'm almost finished restoring was my dad's that he bought in '73 and parked in the back 20 acres around '87.
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I graduated from Ferris in ‘87.
 
DionR said:
I graduated from Ferris in ‘87.
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If you were into the car scene back then, we might have hung out or Cruised downtown at some point. I didn't have anything special back then except for my 79 Magnum, but my buddy Rod had a B5 69 Super Bee with a dual tunnel ram, plumbed nitrous 383 that we would occasionally roll through downtown (it was 100% a track car though), that thing was a beast and would shake the entire downtown structure.
 
I have found a couple of cars that I had previously owned, more by chance or plain dumb luck than by searching.
First one was a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 that I bought from my brother. He built a nasty 351 Cleveland for it, did the body and paint, etc. I had it for a couple years, spent a lot of money on it that I didn't have at the time, and ended up trading it for my first fox body Mustang. I was cruising back lanes in a somewhat sketchy area of town a couple years later and found it mostly stripped in a back lane.
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About 20 years ago I was looking for another fox body Mustang and by chance I found a 20th Anniversary convertible that I had bought new off the showroom floor in 1985. I wasn't able to make a deal on that one, and bought another one, then last fall I was selling a set of original wheels for one of those cars, and the buyer turned out to be the current owner of that same car that I had bought new.
 
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DionR said:
Ever wonder what has happened to a car you used to own did a search? And then wished you hadn't?

I sometimes get curious about certain cars from my past. Some I don't care about, some I know they ended up in a JY or scrapped because I took them myself, and then their are the cars I wished I hadn't sold or just had a warm spot in my heart that I wondered about.

...

Ah well.
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Ever wonder what has happened to a girl you used to go out with...?

I find it's the opposite phenomenon, though -- when you come across one and she looks like she's been in the demo derby, you feel a little bit better for having dodged that bullet.

Had this happen just last month. Went to a reunion, there was a recent photo of a tiny cute girl I went out with, except now she'd tripled in size.
Whew!

Still, as with the cars, there are those ones that got away...

- Eric
 
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