What made you get into Mopars?

[Ghoste]

For me it started with the styling as the bait and as I learned more about them it was the engineering that reeled me in for life.

[69bronzeT5]

Dukes for sure

[Mefirst]

Insanity

/Tom

[terrible one]

Bullitt.

[Ghoste]

The styling of the car in Bullitt or the image?

[Brock Samson]

 The turbine bronze HEMI GTX the dude around the corner got when I was 9,.. Man that Car sounded MEAN!!!!
the ground shook even before he came around the corner..  And I remember the Chargers' intro in '66 as well... Dodge Rebellion white hats GoGo boots and all...

[redrider]

my dad telling me about the cars my uncle had like his 71 sixpack challenger and 70 superbee

[Rolling_Thunder]

went for a ride in a 68 charger that had a 440+6 4-speed with 4.10 Dana...     I was 11 at the time - bought my charger at 15   

[mopar_nut_440_6]

When I was 5 there was a guy who had a brand new hemi orange Superbird around the corner from me. We always went over there and hung out and would look at the wing and the cartoon on it. He would also honk the beep beep horn. As a young kid this was just too cool. Incidentally a friend of mine bought the car a number of years ago and sold it a few years back!

Then when I got my license by fluke I bought a 75 Plymouth Scamp and started working on the 318. I then met a friend we called Barracuda Joe who had a 70 Cuda and he built up a 440. I remember the first time I saw it and he did a brake stand and left 2 blocks of rubber. I was amazed and even more when he took me for a ride. I was hooked after that and had to have a 440. I bought my Charger and drove it for a bit with a 360 and realized how slow it was. I was in a Mopar club and had the fastest top speed car but it was a slug off the line. I was working in a pizza restaurant (2.65 an hour) so I parked the car for a year and built up a 440. I then started drag racing at the strip while my friends played on the street. I ending up learning how to tune and after a year had the fastest car out of my group!! Been hooked ever since.

Sorry for the rant!! 

[Ghoste]

Man that's no rant, it was a cool story.  Thanks for sharing it.

[kingjoop]

DoH 

[MoparSam]

For Mopars my dad done it and for a '68 Charger, Bullitt

[tan top]

When I was 5 there was a guy who had a brand new hemi orange Superbird around the corner from me. We always went over there and hung out and would look at the wing and the cartoon on it. He would also honk the beep beep horn. As a young kid this was just too cool. Incidentally a friend of mine bought the car a number of years ago and sold it a few years back!

Then when I got my license by fluke I bought a 75 Plymouth Scamp and started working on the 318. I then met a friend we called Barracuda Joe who had a 70 Cuda and he built up a 440. I remember the first time I saw it and he did a brake stand and left 2 blocks of rubber. I was amazed and even more when he took me for a ride. I was hooked after that and had to have a 440. I bought my Charger and drove it for a bit with a 360 and realized how slow it was. I was in a Mopar club and had the fastest top speed car but it was a slug off the line. I was working in a pizza restaurant (2.65 an hour) so I parked the car for a year and built up a 440. I then started drag racing at the strip while my friends played on the street. I ending up learning how to tune and after a year had the fastest car out of my group!! Been hooked ever since.

Sorry for the rant!! 

good story 

for me it was seeing  DMCL in the 70s , can only just remember the first time i saw it , but thought wow it was the mostest awesomeest car i have ever seen , was only 5 or 6 at the time ,decided then & there i'm going to have one of them cars one day !!! exactly like that one !!! ...i said to my parents !! they patted me on the head & said sure  or something like that from what i can remember 
then DOH came along ...then seeing bullit  ..started reading up on chargers ..then mopars ! then learned about dragracing & the ultimate power plant ...the elephant motor  , then wing car domination in the  grand national series
  all by the age of 10 or 11 
   while all my friends were reading comics & stuff , i was reading hot rod etc was learning more & more about who made be baddest muscle cars of all time    Mopar 
   first job i got out of school , started saving ..got my dream car year & a half later  ..never going to part with it 

picture is of me a week after i got my charger  early april  89

second one how it is today   

hmm funny though ..my charger looks younger now &  i keep getting older 

[Chargerrtforme]

I was into the GM cars and Mopars since about 68.  The style and rumble of the Mopars is what really attracted me most.

                                                                                 

[TeeWJay426]

My Dad was a service manager at a Dodge dealer starting in '61. Had a pretty nice string of new cars while I was growing up as a kid. Started with a '62 Dart, '63 Polara, and '64 Polara- all convertibles. Then a '66 Coronet 500, followed by a '68 Coronet 500- both 383 4 barrel cars. Used to hang out at the dealership checking out all the new offerings and drooling over the brochures, dreaming about what I would get when I was old enough. Of course, by the time I could drive, all I could afford was a slant six Dart, and the musclecar era was pretty much over. One of the earliest true musclecars I remembered was  a '66 Hemi Charger that a friend of my Dad's bought brand new. I first saw it when he stopped by the house one day, I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. I couldn't stop drooling over that engine under the hood- I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking at, but the way my Dad and his friend were talking, I knew it was pretty special. And the sound it made when he left the house- which he did in a hurry, just to make a deeper impression on me- was like nothing I had ever heard before. I made up my mind at that young age I was going to have a car just like it someday. I actually went one better- he and my Dad stayed in touch over the years, my interest in the car was made known to him, and in 1984 when his wife got after him to do something with it or sell it because he hadn't touched it in 5 years, I bought it from him. Still have it to this day!

Sorry for the ramble....

[JeffYoung]

Richard Petty.

[richard pettys 73]

Richard Petty.

     

DID YOU MEAN ME?   JUST KIDDING. I AGREE WITH YOU I AM THE SAME EXCEPT I GOT THE CARS BY ACCIDENT, BUT KNEW WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO WITH THEM AFTER I GOT THEM!!

[elanmars]

styling and movies/tv shows. being a kid in the 80s, there were still a lot of 60s and 70s cars around where i lived in Venezuela and i loved them. a lot of times i'd tell my parents i want a "car like that when i'm older!" while pointing to a charger, camaro, chevelle, trans am, etc. i remember thinking as a 4 year old that when i'm older and have a car just like the dukes of hazzard, i'm going to have to practice the hood slides. I also had seen dirty mary crazy larry and remember thinking 1) i want sunglasses like peter fonda, which i got from my dad 2) i'd have to make sure to slow down near train tracks! 3) i'm going to pick up chicks with better teeth than dirty mary.

[Back N Black]

Could not afford the Chevelle that i wanted, so i bought a Charger. 

[mauve66]

3) i'm going to pick up chicks with better teeth than dirty mary.

its good to have some standards................

definitely my dad, he had a 67 mustang a gold color i've never seen on another mustang since (of course) that i remember him changing the tranny out of while parked over a ditch in front of my grandmas house.  he says i liked the mustang more than the 69 Road Runner (dark green color with a darker green or maybe black vinyl top and black interior with bench seat) he had but its the RR i remember riding in all the time.

my best memory was in 73-74 (8-9 yrs old) coming out of Marshall, Mo on the new highway 20 (they just flattened it out for 4-5 miles outside of town then it went back to hills). i don't know the speed limit on a rural 2 lane back then but we were always moving along (16 miles to the house and i NEVER asked "are we there yet?"). anyway we are cruzing along and i keep hearing this reving motor behind us, i'm not wearing a seat belt (of course) but i'm not allowed to climb around the car at this speed either, so i keep looking at my dad as he glances in the mirror and down at his gauges.  anyway this lasts for a couple of miles (i only got to see him on weekends so saturday shopping traffic was big back then) on coming traffic clears and i hear this roar coming by the left side of the car, i strain to see over the dash and see these SS454 badges, about the same time i see these badges go by the car's rear bumper gets even with the RR's front bumper and i'm suddenly pinned to the seat as the front of the RR jumps up, i'm still craining my neck but all i can see is the roof line of the chevelle as it slides back behind us. after what seems like forever i can move in the seat again, my Dad looks over and goes "Beep Beep" and i we both bust out laughing.  that car stayed behind us the whole 16 miles after that, when we turned off they kept going.

anyway back to those damn hills they didn't finish flattenning out, some time later on we were again going home and popped over a blind hill doing well into 70-80 MPH and there was this damn combine (corn picker for you city folks) sitting in the middle of the lane and some on coming traffic so my Dad whips the wheel all the way left and we end up in the ditch on the other side of the road at the same time he grabs me and pushed me into the floor board on the passenger side.  i was kinda bruised up from the impact but i'm sure i would of went through the windshield if he hadn't of done that.  he got his left side pretty banged up but nothing broke. RR was toast though, back then nobody thought you could fix a unibody correctly after a hit like that on the front end.

funny thing, like the mustang i've never seen another RR with that DARK green color since then, maybe its just my childhood memory................... but i don't remember that chevelle ever challenging us again either

[mopar_nut_440_6]

Could not afford the Chevelle that i wanted, so i bought a Charger. 

I think you dodged a bullet there. No pun intended! 

[41husk]

My dad always had mopars but I realy didn't get into them until I was stationed in Millington TN.  I was asigned to the auto hobby shop and my supervisor Henry McCurdy was really into mopars.  He had a 32 Dodge with a 392 hemi.  I saw he always gave guys with Mopars alot more help.  Infact he talked me into buying my 70 Challenger convertible.  A Marine came in and was being transfered over seas and wanted $2500 for it Mr. MCCurdy told me he would buy it but he just wasnt into rag tops.  He said If I take care of it and hang on to it, it will be worth more than 2500 some day.  The only problem I had was I had no money.  Henry told me if there was any way I should probably buy it.  I made a deal to buy it for $1950 and had to borow the money from my father in law.  I guess old Henry was right! I think I could get my $1950 back out of it today.  I probably have over 25k invested in the car.  I wonder if Mr. McCurdy is still alive?  This was way back in 1982 and he was probably in his mid to late 40s then.

[bigcountry]

It started with the DOH, but now I just can't get enough of the 2nd gens.  Gen Lee or not.

[WingCharger]

When I first got into Muscle Cars, I really like AMC cars. AMC led to MoPar I guess...

[mauve66]

When I first got into Muscle Cars, I really like AMC cars.

i thought you said MUSCLE CARS................... just joking now