Your new musclecar

[joey wilkes]

back in my younger day 7 yrs old i remember going to the plymouth dealer with my dad when he bought his 68 ply. barracuda oh ye 426 hemi it was the car at the us nat. this year that had arlen valke on it they had the paper work on the car stating my dad bought it brand new .

[Jim Cassels]

I guess it was not considered a musle car at the time but I ordered a 69 Nova SS 300 HP 350 with turbo 350. the car was butternut yellow, bench seat column shift no carpet and dog dish hub caps. I ordered a 4:10 12 bolt posi but it came with a 3:55. It took 3 mo. to arive and I know the salesman hated to see me coming to check on it. One mo. after it came in it had a 4:10 gear, a set of Jardine headers and a Crane cam that Travis would have frowned on.
I drove the car to the track and could win class & do pretty good in jr. stock unless some of the bad boys towed in. I won one sunday and the guy I beat informed me that if I came back I would take it back in peices.. Well I didnt have a trailer and I belived him so I bought a pair of large combustion heads and a Lunati plus area cam and ran it as a 255 horse. The car ran 4 tenths of a 13.09 national record legally.
Well the first child came along and the trans went away so I lemped in to the dealer and traded it for a 71 chevelle 307. It is amazing what they are doing with the 255 HP combo today.
Jim

[michael mercer]

My first new car. I bought it late 63 for my daily driver and weekend G/SA. At the time I was living in Chicago, so I took the car over to Rudys Custom Exhaust in Berwyn and they made a set of hedders for it.
Skip's was the favorite Cruise through for the Chicagoland Hot Rod set.
At the 65 Indy nats, I got beat second round of class by my hero "Big Daddy Mathews" and that bad *** Buick.
The Comet was a keeper, but when I saw the 66 Fairlane GTA, it was time to trade.
I still have the 63 Falcon Sprint that my Dad bought new the summer of 63, but when I die, Dave will probably put it on Ebay.

[bill dedman]

Myron,

Steve's car was in a cover shot on one of the Mopar magazines about ten years ago, but I don't recall seeing an article about it. It"s blue, with a fair amount of graphics down the side.

If you want, I can email you a photo of it; just send an email to Billdedman@hotmail.com, and I'll send the photo by return mail.

Bill

[gymracer01]

Travis, don't know how I missed this thread. Anyway, I do have a story of my first new car. It was a 1966 Chevy II SS L79 that I order and took delivery of in Jan 1966 in Campbellsville, KY.
I bought it because of the drivetrain. I had learned of the 350hp 327 from a friend in Gainsville GA that had bougth a 65 Chevelle with that setup. He was fast and out running everything on the street at the time, yes GTOs too. I wanted to buy a base 2 dr Chevelle with that engine for 66. My boss called a friend at Cunningham-Kelly Chevrolet in Hartsville TN as they were selling a lot of hot Chevrolets at the time. He told us that the engine was going to be in the 66 Chevy II and that would be a hot setup. Since the Nova was light anyway I got carried away and went for the SS and Hardtop, sometimes wish I had stuck to the post idea. I had a 3.73 posi and put better tires on it right away. I took it to GA in Feb. 66 and with only recurving the distributor and a little work on the secondary side of the carburetor, it went 13.10 on some recapped slicks. I won A/S the first time out. I never really raced it on the street much because of the braking and handling. I moved back to Campbellsville in the fall of 66 and the old Campbellsville dragstrip was still there but they just left the gate open and we would go in and race without the cops bothering us. I spent many a night there racing. I lost only a hand full of races. They were bringing cars from E-town and Lousville to try to beat me. After the first 1,000 miles on the car I had changed the cam to the 375hp solid lifter cam and done a few other tweaks to it to be able to out run the rest of the Chevy IIs. It was not really fast by today standards, but 12.50s in 66 with a street driven car would win you a bunch of races if you could drive it. I've own a couple since, but nothing like that FIRST ONE!
JIm N.

[Travis Miller]

In Jan 1966 I bought a ’63 Galaxie 500 with a 406. The car was pretty fast for an 18 year old kid. The addition of slicks, exhaust cutouts, and a gear allowed me to win a few trophies. I eventually put a 427 low-riser in the car. Of course the 390 emblems on the front fenders fooled quite a few on the street. And I did a lot of street racing back then. That was until I got a job teching Stock and S/S at a local outlaw dragstrip in 1969. Went to work at the local NHRA track, Ohio Valley Raceway in 1970 and the rest is Stock and S/S history.


Travis

(Disclaimer: Opinions expressed by me on this forum are exactly that, my opinions.)

[ROCKETWORKS]

My first taste of the musclecar era was when my brother and i talked my mom into trading the family station wagon in in 1966 for a 66 impala ss 396, we imedietly proceeded to break it in properly at the local dragstrip..Coles county, Charleston, Il. Then we went car shopping for my brother,hit all the dealership,s test drove every thing, a shelby- hertz gt-350 mustang ,tri-power gto 67 ss396 chevelle, settled on a 67 442 sedan on the showroom floor 400 4 spd. white with black top, what a screamer !!!!!!!! Next came a 69 gto ordered in with the ram-air 4 motor. 433 gear .duel-gate shifter ect. Was standing there when they dropped it of at the dealer, what a sound when they fired that up and rolled it of the truck, we had a plan, rolled it strait into the body shop and it got the Royal-Bobcat paint scheme, the rear spoiler ect. before it hit the street. That was one bad-*** car on the street !!! That car got me through high school and one year of college. Traded it (like a dumb- ***** ) But kept the Ram Air IV motor for a 72 buick GS ran it in pure stock , added the exhaust cut-outs and sticky M & H tires and had a blast ..... then came the wife and kids and a new chevelle statoin wagon, sold the buick but couldn,t stand it bought it back later and still have it....... The rest is history .

[Geerhead55]

In Sept. 1972 I picked up a gorgeous 69 Z/28 from the original owner who took very good care of it. It was Burnished Brown with the White stripes, front and rear spoilers, Endura Bumper, standard grille,full console interior and of course the 302/4speed/ 12bolt-3.73 rearend combo. The first thing I bought for it was a set of Cragar S/S mags and Goodyear Polyglass GTs to dress it up a little. I'd had 4 speed cars before,but this thing shifted very nicely. Theres nothing like taking your buddys for a ride and getting sideways in all four gears. I took it to Puyallup Raceway Park (R.I.P.) in ' 73 and went 14.80s which was'nt bad for then but I wanted to go quicker. I got really good at changing clutches in that car. In ' 74 I had a friend with a 5 Litre hydroplane that needed a new block, so I sold him my DZ 302 block(I did'nt say I was smart!), and put together an 11to1 355 with the Z heads(492s) and a Crower cam and a Torker/ 600 Holley system which went 13.98 still on the Polyglass tires.For 1975 I planned to get some slicks, traction bars and a cowl hood, but I deffinately needed some headers, so I got a set of Hookers for it, put them on at my parents house and on the way to the muffler shop to get my 2 1/2 in. Turbos, with open headres I got T-boned at an unmarked intersection by an oriental woman in a Datsun who spoke no English, but thats another story. Anyway the body shop did a great job of fixing it, I got it back just before Christmas and they told me to bring it back after New Years to get the stripes on after the paint had "cured". I did so and on Fri.Jan 5th got it back and life was good,,,until Wed.Jan 10th when the car was stolen from my work and was found 7 months later and there was'nt enough left to bring home it was so trashed. I'd already settled with the insurance company, getting the usual screw job.
Its the one car I wish I could have back,but I never bought another one. I still had those origianl date coded Rally Wheels in the Cragar boxes until a couple years ago when my son bought a 72 Chevelle and we put them on his car.
Danny Durham

[Bobby DiDomenico]

My dad took me with him and he test drove a blue and silver 1971 Boss 351 at the local Ford dealer. I was suprised he was really going to get it and drive it to work. That is until his insurance agent gave him the rate quote, the insurance company wanted twice more for that one car then they had been paying for two cars. And that was with NO kids driving! He didn't get it, ma said food was more important.

I've always wondered what happened to it.