What got you into Mopars?

[Splush]

I am curious...what got you into Mopars? When I was growing up, you were either Chevy or Ford...that's it (although my older sister's 1st car was a '64 Valiant vert)! Maybe as teenagers we were too poor to afford a Mopar as Sb Chevy & Ford were a dime a dozen, as were the parts. My 1st car was a '68 Chevy stepside PU. My father is a retired A&P mech. We stayed as a friend's house one year to go to the Dayton, OH Air Show. The guy had a ton of books, models, etc on Mopars, specifically early A-Body Barracudas. I remember thinking that they were so cool and so unique and vowed to someday own a Mopar. Fast forward 35 years and many Chevys later, here I am. What is your story?

 

[33 IMP]

A friend of mine traded a well built 454 (a big motor at the time), just the engine, for a running, fast 440/727/dana60 1970 Duster. Straight-up trade, for 11 sec street car.
At roughly the same time, I had a box nova,with a real 68 MO Z/28 302 in it. I was offered a 426 maxwedge, carbs to pan straight up for the 302 long block. A different friend found me a 62 Savoy (from GTX John) to put the max in, for $450. Came with a 2.77 low gear pb torqueflite and 4.10 suregrip 8 3/4.

 

[KiwiKid72]

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[kiwigtx]

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I concur with that statement above ^^^^ (picture lifted)

I may or may not have also torn a page out of a school library book also at age 13.......with a picture very similar to this one....I still have the trimmed page from that book.....

It was only a year earlier that I had found a custom car book at school.....and that gave me an interest in cars. It featured a shorty VW Kombi, a beach buggy made of a VW Beetle, and amongst others ...a weird looking pickup truck that could pull wheel-stands.

Now 40 summit years later I get a real one.....apart from the ability to pull the front wheels up.....

 

[chargervert]

My parents bought this 70 Charger R/T SE new when I was six years old,the rest is history!

 

[hdwrench]

when i was a teen , a guy in our neighborhood was a drag racer , yep you guessed it - mopars . i’d walk by and envy his driveway full on various hot rods . 62 savoy ( factory drag car ) dart gts, couple of 64ish b bodies, and an early amx( his wife’s toy) early barracuda . he also had the mopar tow vehicles. a few years later it was about time i could drive and i picked up a 68 coronet hot rod and then a ………….. and by the way we’re still friends to this day …

 

[Tony Tee]

Seeing a 69 dodge charger for the first time on federal highway in boca raton Florida in the early 1970's I was hooked! I said to my brother, I'm going to get one of those when I'm old enough to drive.

 

[Outlawd]

My first car was a 73 Monte Carlo, then shortly after that I had a 70 Nova, a T-bird, a 71 model J grand prix and various other 2 door cars but then I found a 1970 lime green Cuda for sale locally, that changed everything.. That 70 Cuda started a mopar wildfire in me that still burns today some 35 years later. Over the last 30 years all my wife and I have ever owned are mopars. I have been blessed enough to collect several muscle cars and even played around with a Viper for a few years. It's "Mopar or no car" for my family.

 

[Eggo]

I am curious...what got you into Mopars? When I was growing up, you were either Chevy or Ford...that's it (although my older sister's 1st car was a '64 Valiant vert)! Maybe as teenagers we were too poor to afford a Mopar as Sb Chevy & Ford were a dime a dozen, as were the parts. My 1st car was a '68 Chevy stepside PU. My father is a retired A&P mech. We stayed as a friend's house one year to go to the Dayton, OH Air Show. The guy had a ton of books, models, etc on Mopars, specifically early A-Body Barracudas. I remember thinking that they were so cool and so unique and vowed to someday own a Mopar. Fast forward 35 years and many Chevys later, here I am. What is your story?

have loved hot rods / muscle cars since a little kid growing up at car meets and drag strips. always wanted a muscle car and a truck and mopars just appealed to me more than anything else did. when i was 22 a few years ago i could finally afford one, found an ad in a uk magazine for a guy who sells cars and does free shipping to the uk so messaged him and he sent me photos of my '73 satellite and i fell in love with it! it's my daily, breaks down occasionally but thats just through being used, i drive it all over the country and it does most of the journeys without a hiccup. i own a chevy and a caddy as well and dont trust them to do that the way i trust my satellite, really is mopar or no car

 

[PlymCrazy]

The holy grail of all cars dad owned was his '70, 340 'Cuda. I have vague memories of it in the mid 70's as I was still very young. Red, black vinyl top, M/T N50's on the rear. And the cutouts and paint job made it a head turner everywhere he went. 2nd or 3rd place in the Rochester Auto Show I was told back then. Even though dad was a Chevy man, he always bragged on that 'Cuda through the years. That left a huge impression on me for Mopar muscle(in particular Plymouth) through the years.
He'd take me to the drags as a kid and I fell in love with the '68 & '69 Roadrunners. They were the 1/8th mile wheel standers that caught my eye at Lancaster Speedway in Buffalo, NY. I was so infatuated with those RR's I'd regularly draw pictures of their tail ends in a notebook I carried around. Been PlymCrazy(crazy about Plymouths) since LOL.
I have a place in my heart for all American classics and muscle. But nothing stands out to me quite like the late 60's thru early 70's Mopar muscle.

 

[Ron H]

Started having a thing about mopars when I was a little kid even though my folks didn’t have one. I’m going way back to the finned mopars that would catch my eye. Had two uncles that owned a ’57 Chrysler and a ’58 Dodge they’d let me play in. Few years later my decade older cousin got a new ’64 Sport Fury and somehow talked his dad into co-signing on a ’64 Polara 426/4-speed just a few months after getting the Fury. His dad took over the Fury and my cousin won tons of races with the Dodge at drag strips in IL/IN/WI. Getting a ‘ride’ in those cars convinced me I had to have one someday. Mopars just kept getting better and bought a ’70 Cuda BB 4-spd vert as my first mopar. Later a Challenger.

In 1995 came across a pristine CA ’63 Fury vert I later restored and still have it. Much as I’d like to have another Cuda, Challenger, or GTX/RR, etc. can’t give up the ’63 given all my B,S, & T’s on it and recollection of that body style laying eyes on it as a 9-year-old.

 

[AR67GTX]

In high school I went through several infatuations with cars I desired to own - first a 64 Galaxie 390/4speed, then a 66 GTO. But the first car I bought was a 4 year old 383, black 64 Sport Fury. I loved that car. I got away from Mopar after it for quite awhile but always wanted another one and finally got back into them about 2000.

 

[Mackman]

My dad bought a 67 Fury I at a state police auction in 1969. 440. That's the car I learned to drive in, never looked back.

 

[1967coronet]

My 1st mopar was a 383 4 speed RR.
Bought it because it was cheaper than the SS Chevelles , Mach 1s ect.
Then I discovered I could not kill it.
That old RR would live through each wild weekend and handle it.
Hard not to love a car / brand like that.

 

[58belvedere]

A friend in High School (1976/77) had a 6 Pack Dodge (pickup). It was so C@@L! I've always liked the wing cars. One day a guy at work (Walnut Bowls, Rocheport, MO.) had a 1938 Plymouth 'Elite' he called it. I bought it for $200. It was an undrivable 4 door sedan. Anyway, Joined the Air Force in 1977 and left it to be sold. Along time later I bought a 318 Fury 4 door for commuting. It handled well. Then the 1957-1959 Sickness started. Have 4 now all in various states of disrepair. Marc. (still have a 1958 Cameo I bought in '77, running)

 

[Hey-O]

My dad bought a 67 Dart GT, new in 67 and drove it for years. In highschool I bought two new cars and when my dad said it was time for them to get a new car, I couldn't see the Dart going. I got it as a toy and that lead to my 69 Dart. I went on to own many cars, none of them a mopar. My daily drives were all new Chryslers since 1986 and it's been a long ride of around 2 dozen, cars, many truck and 7 or so jeeps. I never got back into mopar till I built a few Chevys and in 2018 after selling my last build my wife bought me Cora. This will be my last car and when I'm done with it, it will be given away as a gift to a young friend of mine. The hobby is so screwed up and expensive, my goal is to pass it on to a young gun with no money for a hobby like this, but a love for the smell of gas. I'm paying it forward, as my dad did for me with his Dart. The circle of life.........

 

[cosgig]

Getting into cars was easy for my brother and I, our grandpa was a Kendall Oil rep. Getting into Mopars was easier, our Dad came home one day with this, and we’ve been hooked ever since.

 

[patrick66]

My brother-in-law had really cool cars when I was a kid - '55 Chevy hi-boy gasser street car, '63 Corvette ragtop, '74 D200 Power Wagon -that kinda stuff. I had to have something cool and Mopar, but I was 12 and the selection was slim back then in my part of the state. The CO-OP behind my Dad's business had an old Plymouth parked along the fence that had been there for a bit. It belonged to the manager, a guy named George, who was an old-school hot-rodder with a sweet '23 T-bucket that had a 392 Hemi in it. I wanted this Plymouth - a 1952 green four-door Cranbrook. Engine wasn't locked up, but it wasn't running, either. Solid car all around - it was only 21 years old then. I asked the price. It could be mine for the princely sum of ten dollars. He'd even throw in a 6V tractor battery! Sold!

Got it running where it sat, but had a persistent miss, which I figured was a stuck valve, maybe? Dad let me drive that home (four miles)! I was pumped! I started digging into the car immediately, cleaning it up and then making that faded green paint shine like there was no tomorrow. Let's look at that flathead Six. Still missing. So I yanked the plugs, and they all looked good except for number six. I shined a light in the plug hole, and got a great view of the crankshaft. No slug, no rod. Got the front off the ground and looked underneath...a nice hole in the pan way in the back! Oh, fun!

A couple of weeks later, I found another '52 that looked like hell, but ran like a top! Another ten dollars later, and it came home with me. This was my first engine swap!
(Below is not my actual car, just a pic I borrowed online)

 

[YY1]

I grew up in Dayton.

It is for sure a gm town.

Next city over is Kettering, named for Charles Kettering, inventor of the electric starter and founder of Delco.
A couple huge Delco plants in the area as well as Harrisson Radiator, also a gm subsidiary.
Several of my friends parents worked for gm.

There was also an Chrysler AirTemp plant, though. My best friend's dad worked there and so did my uncle.

However, gm was WAY over represented, even by national standards.
fords were a far, far second fiddle and Mopar seemed to be only for the hard core.

 

[PlymCrazy]

...and when I'm done with it, it will be given away as a gift to a young friend of mine....my goal is to pass it on to a young gun with no money for a hobby like this, but a love for the smell of gas. I'm paying it forward, as my dad did for me with his Dart. The circle of life.........

I could only click the like button once. So here's a few more...