Walking through a large cruise night this summer, I saw a 1969 Charger and stopped in my tracks like someone had just hit me with a Louisville Slugger. The copper 1969 Charger with the white vinyl roof shown to the left and after the jump represented the first car I ever lusted after as a kid walking to school. Creepier? I am nearly 100% sure that this is the ACTUAL car I shuffled past for years laden with books.
Long story short, the family that lived four houses up from my childhood home had a gearhead in their ranks. His name was Ken and he had a copper colored 1969 Charger with a white vinyl roof. In 1980s fashion, it wore Cragar SS/T wheels. The car was always coming and going as Ken tore around the neighborhood as a high schooler. I estimate that he was about 8 years older than me.
Ken joined the military and went and fought in the Gulf War back in the early 1990s. The car was backed into the end of the driveway and waited like a loyal dog for his owner to return. I walked by it every day and KNEW that I would have it some day. Dreaming the thoughts that car obsessed kids do, I had all these awesome ideas of what I would do with the car. Ken came home from the war and was received warmly by the neighborhood. It is a little blurry in my mind, but I think he scored an old Pontiac. Firebird or GTO I can’t remember, but either way, he was in some vintage Poncho iron while the Charger waited patiently.
In a horrible twist, Ken was involved in an accident not a couple miles from home in the Pontiac. I want to remember that at drunk driver hit him, but the circumstances escape me. Ken was a quadriplegic after the accident, spent ages in the hospital and eventually returned home to be cared for by his family. Still the Charger waited….and waited.
One day I was walking home from school and there was a ramp truck in the driveway of Ken’s home winching the Charger with the rusty Cragar SS/T wheels, bubbling paint, and faded chrome onto its back. I went home, dropped my bag and had a good cry for myself upstairs in my room. My first automotive crush played out the way they usually do, without the happy ending.
In the years after the Charger went away, Ken would sometimes hear my father and I working on the race cars we ran together and would come down to feel the noise, and breathe the unburnt hydrocarbons on occasion. I do not know Ken’s status or whereabouts now as I have not lived in that house for a decade, but I am nearly 100% certain the car you see in the photo below is his old Charger, restored.
That’s my story….what was your first automotive crush?
When I was a wee lad, my mother was an avid watcher of the Avengers TV program.
There, I got my first look at the Lotus Elan as well as Diana Rigg.
What a combo!
It was TV for me too, I fell in love with the A-Team van
Good story, I hope that Ken is still around, as I’m also a Gulf War veteran. My first automotive crush was my neighbor Jerry’s 1972 Dodge Challenger 340 Rallye that he and his grandfather repainted black with a white T/A stripe and Cragar SST rims.Jerry eventually sold the car after he got out of the navy, while I was still in it, Jerry told me of the car’s demise as the next owner put a roots style supercharger on it and eventually crashed it into a ravine, killing the Dodge Challenger.
The American graffiti 55 and 58 Chevys
I was leaving daycare and right out front was a 1970 Chevelle SS, red with black stripes. I was maybe 5 so this would have been 1973. That was THE car that I lusted after for years, then the price of then went through the roof and that dream died.
Mine was the 67 Chevelle, dad had a white SS that he drag raced. It nearly killed me when he sold it and bought a 67 Camaro to replace it.
It’s a toss-up…my uncle’s white/red ’77 Camaro Type LT with the Hurricane wheels and the chambered exhaust, or the neighbor’s ’74 ‘Cuda with the hyperactive 340. Both cars smacked of late-70’s/early ’80s, were loud and obnoxious, and looked like violence sitting still.
I would have to say it was my moms 64 Thunderbird. I loved the sequential turn signals and the space age looking instrument panel. The speedometer was so cool. It looked like a thermometer with the red “fluid” moving back and forth in a tube. The fuel and oil psi guages had a what looked like a red line that would move across the “bubble shaped” guages. The car just looked so space age at the time. I was four when she got it.
Oh dear … thats a serious toss up . So I’d have to say it’d either be my dads friends Austin Healy 3000 … or the 65 Vette convertible he later replaced it with ( 327 , manual , burgundy red w/parchment white interior and roof )
A close second to those two was my grandfathers Mercury Turnpike Cruiser …. between the button transmission … that center section rear window that lowered and all the other ‘ tech ‘ goodies of the era I thought that was definitely the best and coolest off the showroom floor non – sports car I knew of at the time
My neighbor a few houses down from me had a 63 1/2 Galaxie 427. From when I was 8 yrs old when he bought till I was 17, that was my dream car. About a yr after I got my license, I went to his house (the car was sitting for about 5 yrs) and asked about purchasing the car. He wouldn’t sell me the car since the thought lof it being restored (which waz the plan) it would be too painful to see it down tbe street and not be his car anymore. He ended up selling the car out of state for lesz money than I offered him! I hated Fords from that moment on!
Mine was a 62 Corvette I found on the used car lot of North Plainfield Dodge in NJ. back in 66. It was Maroon with black interior and a 4 speed with both tops. I had a job after school but not enough money saved to buy it. That’s the one that got away. I have owned a few since then and still drive a newer one today as an old man of 64. I like being an old guy in a Corvette but I never did get another 62. Like most things automotive these days they are way to much money.
A guy in high school had a black 1970 Mach1 Mustang. 351C, four speed, Cragars, Pure automotive sex. His Dad was a salesman at the local Ford dealer, so it was set up right. Torker intake Hooker headers, lots of camshaft, you get the idea. I would walk out of school, and here would be “that car” lumpity-bumping across the parking lot. I ain’t been right since…
First would have to be my Grandad’s ’65 F-100. Loved that pickup.
Second is without a doubt the a dark green 1968 Dodge Charger that I really really really wanted to buy.
1972 Olds 442, olds 350/4spd. White vinyl top, white interior and the color to me was stunning to look at but I have never seen it on another car. It was”medium green metallic” and it really popped with that white top. It had big and littles with RWL mounted to cragar outlaws with spinners. I grew up across the street from that car and would sneak peaks at it every chance I got. I still lust after it to this day. He sold it back in 03 to buy a Harley, I was about 3 days late with the money to buy it…It tears me up inside to think it could have been mine.
I found a pic of a 442 with the same color but not the same year…
[img]http://encarsglobe.com/data_images/models/oldsmobile-442/oldsmobile-442-09.jpg[/img]
Linda Vaughn & “Jungle Pam” Hardy
Easy….My Dad’s ’70 Mach 1.
When I was a kid the neighbor bought a new 1962 Olds Starfire convertible that was black with red interior. What a hot car, i couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Mine has to be the ’67 Camaro RS. I was fortunate to have one in ’72-’73 when I got married, but then I sold it for more of a “family” type car. That is possibly the biggest regret of my adult life. I would say that it still ranks number two on the list of cars that I would most like to have. Maybe after I finish building my street rod I can find another ’67.
That friggin Ford drag team 68 cobra jet that lowered my natl record so bad I had to quit SS.
Copper 69 Chargers have a mystical appeal. There is ALWAYS one in the Need For Speed games (it’s a HEMI). Mine was a R/T with a 440. No vinyl top, but it DID have the factory luggage rack on the trunk lid. Everyone who rode in it claimed to know one or another former owner. At least one claimed to be onboard when it got a cigarette burn on the shifter indicator on the console. My family sold it for me while I was in the military and surely enough I encountered it years later. That car and the ’75 Monza (262 ci, yuck!) that replaced it turned me from a Chevy Lover to a Mopar Man for the rest of my days.
Aluminum front end max wedge ’63 Dodge…
67 Chevelle SS family car got sold to a relative when I was 11. I was some pissed off at dad I had envisioned a tunnel ram cragars etc. Then at 14 I got the purple Dart and once the leaning tower of power was replaced with a 318 dad was forgiven . by the way the Chevelle was replaced with a 77 Newport yuk.
I started out taking broken 911 Porsche, and other car toys apart with butter knives and tell my dad I was fixing it before I was in kindergarten. But a bright orange ^68 Charger would be what started it for me.
I got into cars from movies. Chity Chitty Bang Bang was the first, the chromed front end and boat tail rear looked so good, Then The Great Race and Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies made cars fun. Finally Smokey and the Bandit sealed it for me.
A few years later I learned to drive.
I was the kid with the biggest Hot Wheel collection in the neighborhood. As far as the first actual car I wanted so bad I could taste? It was a 68 Mustang Fastback. It was parked in front of my friends house. I owned it two days later. I was 14, and that was my first car.
Al Joniec’s 68 cobra jet Mustang,used to see it passing by his shop in Pennsauken NJ with my dad,I could never talk him into stopping.One night @ Rice & Holman Ford my dad was getting warranty work done on his 68 Torino GT,and Al’s Mustang was sitting on the showroom floor in exibition.I was 16 that car was my first real love,none of the Chevy or Mopar guys in school could say sh*t about slow Fords with that car!
69 chevy camaro z28
1968 HEMI Roadrunner …..the neighbor across the street from me had one, he would start it up and back out of the garage, I would run over and watch him work on it in awe