How did you become addicted to MoPar?

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kocuda

kocuda

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Everyone has a story! I'll share mine.
I went to work at a Plymouth dealership in 1967, fresh out of high school (giving away my age). The dealership sent me to every school Chrysler had available and by 68 I was a line mechanic specializing in engine, transmission and differential repairs, just when all these cool muscle cars were released.
68 & 69 were the Hemi's, 70 was the 340 and 440 sixpac cars.
You know when you fix them you have to test drive them, and you have to pound on them a little to make sure everythings ok! Right!
That was it,
I WAS ADDICTED!!!!!!!
The stories I could tell you about the stupid owners of these cars, and what they did to them, would leave you in ammazement.
1 example;
After installing a clutch in a hemi Roadrunner for the second time, I had the owner go for the test drive with me. We are going down the highway about 65mph everythings working fine. In amasement, before I could react, I see this guy put the tranny back into 1st gear. The instant his foot lifted off that clutch pedal, BANG!, blew the new clutch.
His response, its a fully syncro'd tranny, should be able to go to any gear any time!
It was a great time in my life, I've been addicted to MoPar ever since.

Whats your story?
 
When I was 15 in 1985 my Father was looking for a 1969 Super Bee.I found a 1968 Coronet a few miles from our house.He did not want the Coronet but I did.I bought the Coronet when I was 15.Dad took me to a Mopar show in Indy around the same time as I bought the Coronet and I have been hooked ever since.....
Jim
 
My Mom dated this die hard Mopar guy. His name was Lyle Barny. So it just kind of rubbed off on me. That and his 70 340 Dart was a bad a$$ car. I took over the car after he was killed in a bike accedent. I keep it in memory of him. Now I am Hooked on Mopar.
 
My father was a Chrysler dealer and when me and my brothers were born they injected MOPAR into our veins! LOL That's the only way I can explain it.
 
My Grandfather, Dad and uncles ran a Dodge dealership from 1963 until 1980. I remember groing up with all those cool cars around : Darts, Chargers, Coronets Superbees and the list goes on. Dad drove a new hemi Charger when I was in elementary school. Mopars are just in my blood.
 
When I was looking for my first ride, I was mostly going for a 'vette. Every day on my way to school there was a tow yard that had this unknown to me muscle car. After learning a thing or two about mopars and three years later I got to drive my Barracuda for the first time. No wonder why I forgot about the 'vette when I learned what a REAL muscle car is like. Besides, a Big Block on an A-body Mopar? Who wants a chebby after that?
 
My dad had a 71 Road Runner but it was my uncle who got me hooked at the age of seven. My uncle had a 73 Lemon Twist, Twister Duster. I always told myself that I was going to get one those cars. Well, even though it's not a 73, I did get one of those cars.
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Went for a ride in my now deceased Uncles 4-speed Superbird, it was vitamin C and I'll never forget the look on the troopers face when we blew past him at around 120 on the highway....D
 
My story's a bit different. I'm actually the only "car-oriented" person in my family; since I could walk I was obsessed with mechanical things, including fans, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, R/C cars, go-karts, and finally actual cars. When I was 7 or so my dad got an old '83 Buick Riviera (not much, I know) that got me interested in old cars with big engines. When I was 14 I asked my mom to get me a book about muscle cars and at first I was into '70 SS Chevelles (yeah, I know, typical newbie attitude). Then the new Charger came out and I thought it was pretty cool; I started reading about Hemis and the old Mopars and learned how advanced Chrysler engineering was back in the muscle car days. The final inspirational moment came when I was 15 and met a guy with a 440-powered '65 Coronet "Super-Stock" lookalike. He took me for a ride in that, doing burnouts and holeshots and whatnot, and I was HOOKED. I made a vow to myself that my first car would be an old Mopar and some day I would have something just as fast as that Coronet. Almost three years later, and here I am with my '70 Duster 318 getting my hands greasy and draining my bank account.
 
Come on guys, Has to be a reason you chose Mopars over C or F or for the young guns imports.

SHARE IT WITH US!
 
I,m from Ontario,so this is kinda from Ontario.When I was 5or6 years old the local dradstrip(Cayuga Speedway)was around the corner,and we used to sit on the main street at the 5 and dime(variety store)and watch all the racecars going by driving and on trailers.When I got home that evening,my fathers friend had stopped by in his Roadrunner(I think it was a 440 4 speed)frikken pri#k made me sh%$t my pants.He was either drunk or just plain crazy cause he had that car all over bangin the gears,scared the bajeebals out of me!40 years and multiple brandXer,s now I,m stuck on anything light with penstar on it!Frik I,m gettin old??
 
Riding in the back of my dad's Desoto as a small kid. And learing how to drive in his old 63 dart.
 
Growing up my best friends' Dad owned a Plymouth- Chrysler dealeship and we were allowed to drive all of the new shipments. This was 1964 to 1971 when we graduated college. How can you not be hooked when you get to drive a different GTX, Roadrunner, or big block Cuda almost every week. It seemed we were always bending pushrods in the 440's and 383's and he would make us fix anything we broke.I have owned Chrysler products almost exclusively for the last 45 years.
 
My parents bought a new New Yorker when I was in Jr. High School in 1967. It had a 440. I was intrigued by the torsion bars and the fact that it was not a Chebby or Furd. It was also faster than the cars of my parents' friends. That was about the time when all the great performance ads were starting to run on TV and it was the MoPars that always caught my eye. THEN...MoPar began just kicking *** in NHRA Super Stock and in NASCAR. I was sold. I was amongst a small handfull of guys in my High School that actually went with a MoPar. Ironically, of that entire bunch of muscle car owners in my school in the early '70s, the only ones remaining are the MoPars - my '68 GTX, my brother's Superbird, and my buddy's '68 Coronet RT.
 
kocuda said:
Come on guys, Has to be a reason you chose Mopars over C or F or for the young guns imports.

SHARE IT WITH US!
Click to expand...
Well, I've done the C, P(T/A) and the F. Everybody's mama has these cars. I simply wanted something no-one around me has. I have not seen another running or parked Duster in the two years I've owned my car. For me it's kinda hard to explain. Our Mopars seem to have a uniqueness about them that I just can't seem to put in words. I've had a Camaro, Trans Am's and a Porsche. I like the interior better than the Camaro. It handles better than my T/A and Porsche with more hp to boot. I have never babied any of those cars like I have my Mopar. Truth be told, before I bought my Duster I was planing on buying a Challenger II sport plane.
 
when i was about 7 yrs old the year was about 1993 my friend at the time had a uncle that owned a junk yard i remember we followed him to a big garage he had on the lot i remember he had a bunch of racing pics and stuff all over the walls and there in the garage he had a 1969 1/2 superbee with that big black scoop i remeber he had a bee over the shifter and he had a 1969 roadrunner HEMI i remeber he was teaching me to say hemi and i came home and kept saying HIMI instead of HEMI then my friend pointed to a car and said that his uncle was giving this car to him when he turned 18 i cant remember what kind it was though,, ive been addicted ever since i just wish i can remember more like i bet the yard was covered with old cars!!
 
Well I pretty much grew up in the back of a 1941 Willys sedan with a 383 in it, also had fiberglass fenders up front. Man that thing really hauled!!! Was later replaced with a 360 and sold...

That car was sold to finish putting the roadrunner back together (needed a bunch of small stuff (paint, recovered seats, rechromed bumpers, and small replacement parts). So now me and my dad terrorize the streets with the HEMI :cheers:

Anyway, I have a lot of friends with mopars too... just always been around them... and I'm going to buy a dart or cuda right out of highschool

I guess I have my dad to thank for all this. My uncle had some mopars growing up that my dad used to drive. And one night with a friend, my dad was in a McDonald's parking lot when the ground started to shake. A HEMI gtx rolled through with open headers and my dad wanted one ever since. Went into the dealership in Mid 1967 and asked to see info about HEMI barracudas... he didn't want a racecar so he ended up getting our HEMI roadrunner instead. He's kind of kicking himself for that, but he needed a driver, not a racecar.
 
I remember hangin' out on Friday nights in downtown Waukegan, north of Chicago. I would always "bum" a ride with one of the street racers and we'd go out where they raced so I could watch. Every Friday I'd ride with a different racer. (well sometimes the same one, because I needed the ride) I rode in many makes and models, big blocks and small blocks. It was always a thrill riding in these cars, until one night I got a ride in a '62 Polara Super Stock Dodge with a 413 wedge. Almost wet my pants! I mean, that car had big torque and flew like none of the others I'd ridden in. From that day forward "I was bitten by the Mopar bug."
 
I grew up in a GM town (Saginaw, MI). My dad worked for GM and was always into old cars, so I spent a lot of time at car shows, etc. I was also big into making models. One day when I was 14 I was at Meijer's (discount chain store) looking at models when a guy my dad knows shows up in the aisle. He takes a 71 Cuda Street Machine off the shelf and says, I had one just like this at one time. He put it back and I took it off the shelf and was hooked. Loved the Cheese Grater grille, the vents, etc. Bought that one and the stock Hemi Orange one with Shaker hood they had. When it came car time, I knew I had to have a Mopar. First car was a 76 Dart Sport, 318, 2 barrel, 8 3/4 rear end. I had no rear floor boards, hole in the trunk from where someone cut a hole to get to the leaf springs. Front fender wells were toast, but man did I love that car. Since then (22 years) the only classic Mopars I've owned were A-bodies. Now to acquire another one...
 
When my Dad went into the service In 68 he gave my Aunt and uncle a beat up 55 chevy. well about 20 years later after my uncle died and my aunt's eye sight got to bad to drive, my aunt gave my pops their 72 duster. light blue with a white vinyl top, 340 w/ 727. when I was 8 or 9, so around 1990 I had to go to work with my mom, on the way home this *** clown in a mid 80 fire bird kept tailgating my mom, flashin his high beams pullin up beside her and yellin hey baby, revin his engine.
Well the guy who lived down the street used to be a Mopar mechanic in the NRHA in its early days, and my dad brought the duster by every 90 days.
anyways I remember my mom tellin me hold on baby, and she pushed me back into the seat and when the light turned green my mom slammed it to the floor. I still remember the sound of the tires squealing off the line. she never took her foot off the gas for about 2 miles. My mom still in her nursing uniform looked up into the rear view and said Fuckin asshole. I remember lookin over the seat out the rear window and I coudln't see any headlights. That was the day I became a Mopar addict
 
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