(Text and Photos by Kaleb Kelley) I was already excited to become a contributor to BangShift, but when Chad told me that my car could be added to the BangShift project cars I was ecstatic. In April of last year, I started my Instagram page, @ClassicsDaily because I saw pages for cars popping up but nothing for classic cars. Now, I’ve grown the page to over 345,000 followers and averaging somewhere around 14,000 likes per picture. I never could’ve thought that my page would grow to what it was today, but after all of my time and effort, it is starting to pay off. Since I had a classic car Instagram page, I started to get the itch to buy a classic of my own. That’s when the search began.

I was only 19, so my budget was pretty low. I went back and forth on what I wanted for months. First, I wanted a Ford Maverick, then I wanted a Nova, and eventually I caught the A-body Mopar bug. The A-body Mopars are good cars for the money and haven’t gotten quite the same hype as others, like the Nova. Thankfully this means that they can be found relatively cheap.

After months of searching, a friend of ours said that he had a second cousin a few hours away who may or may not have a 1972 Plymouth Scamp. My hopes weren’t very high, but I was hoping it would turn out as good as it sounded. I only knew the Dart’s year models well, but not the Scamp. We went and saw the car and I was sold instantly. It was Spinnaker white with black steelies and white letter tires. It had a really cool look to it just how it was.

It also had the original bright blue interior with a bench seat and column shift.

It was powered by a 225 slant-6 that the owner had built up slightly with a big cam, Offenhauser intake, Holley 4-barrel carb, and more. It also had a long tube headers and 3-inch pipe until the axle that turned into 2” pipe out of the back that let off a rumble to rival a small block V8. All I had to do to get it driving right again was go through the brakes!

I drove it that way for a while. In the few months that I was driving it, I put 2,500 miles on it. Then eventually out my young ignorance, blew a few valve seals in the poor leaning tower of power.

This is where the project really began. My dad had a fresh 1971 small block 340 sitting in the shop that he took out of his Satellite in exchange for a monster big block. The obvious thing to do was to take the slant-6 out and give the lonely motor a home. Then we realized that this would be a good time to repaint the engine bay since there would be no engine in it. Of course then I decided to “just” paint the entire thing because of some surface rust popping up.

Fast forward to today: six months later, my Scamp is still in the body shop. Dennis at Len’s Body Shop in Durant, OK is doing a great job on it. It feels like it’s taking forever, but it definitely being done right. Once it’s out of paint, the fun part begins.

I’m going to install the 340 small-block V8 and a 727 Torqueflite transmission, and I’m installing a Holley Performance Terminator EFI to improve the performance and reliability. I really like the design and with the right air cleaner you can hardly see the few extra wires underneath. It will also be getting Wilwood disc brakes in the front, and possibly on the rear eventually. I’m a little up in the air about what rear end I want to use. Ideally, I would like to find an 8 ¾ rear end with 3.23 SureGrip gears, but they’re becoming harder to find. I’ll be figuring that out very soon.

I recently received my full Hotchkis TVS suspension system for the car as well. It, along with the Terminator EFI, is sitting in my room mocking me to get the car finished. I also may be getting a set of wheels that are not yet released, but will look great on my Scamp. The rendering isn’t up to date with exactly how I want it to look, but it gives you a general idea. It is still going to be a few months until I get it finished, but it will be completely worth it.