To all those guys who have a Mopar rotting away.....

[69bronzeT5]

I saw this on Moparts and had to share. A member on Moparts found this on a blog site a while back. It's pretty sad.



Back in high school I knew this kid named Jason. He was a pretty cool kid, a real gearhead just like me and my other friends. He was'nt part of "my circle" as he was a few years younger than us,(14 actually) but we knew him, and he hung around with us from time to time. He thought we were the coolest guys in school(we really were...LOL!!) cuz we all had cool old musclecars. All Jason wanted was a neat old car to work on with his dad (they were very close) and cruise around, picking up girls on the weekends, like we did. My buddy and I knew of an old Charger that was sitting behind a house out in the country. It was about a 71 or 72, black with black interior, automatic, rusty pitted, and peeling Cragars, rotted side-pipes, pop riveted on hood scoop, shackled to the sky, with a set of traction bars, and a faded Crane Cams license plate on the front. It was a real 70's looking hot rod. Sitting in the weeds next to a dilapidated wooden shed, behind an old ramshackle farmhouse. I first saw it when I was 7, and when I was a senior in high school it was still there. We took Jason out there one afternoon to check it out. I'll never forget his reaction when he saw it for the first time. "OH MY GOD!!!, Dude I HAVE to have that car!" he screamed as he jumped out of the car and went running over to it. "It's perfect!" he said. "This is the same kind of car my dad had when he was in high school. I can just imagine how awesome it would be to work on this with him." We knocked on the door, but no one was home.

A few days later Jason came up to us in the hall at school and told us that the Charger was in fact his dad's old car! We were a little surprised, cuz we knew Jason's dad, our dads knew him and we never heard stories of him owning a Charger back in school. Turns out, Jason's dad bought the car used in 71 with only a few hundred miles on it. It was a 71 R/T with a 383 and a 4 speed. He made a hot rod out of it, drove it for a few years, and after he met his wife (in the Charger by the way) other priorities became more important, and he sold to a young kid in 1975. The kid he sold it to was afraid of it, so he sold it to someone from out of town, and Jason's dad never saw it again. After school that day, my buddy and I took Jason and his dad out to see the car and his dad was just as pumped as Jason was when he saw it. "I'll be damned", he said "that's my car!". Aside from the missing 4 speed, it was just as it was when he sold it. The "Kelly Supercharger" tires were still on it! He said he bought those tires June 10th 1975. He remembered that because it was the same day he met his wife.

We knocked on the door and a big ugly fat chick, wreaking of beer and pot answered the door. "Is your husband home?", Jason asked her. "Ummm...... yeah" she said, as she picked something from her disgusting yellow teeth. Jason and his dad had looks on thier faces like little kids at christmas waiting for the man to come to the door. Just then a very scruffy looking guy, in stained boxers, and a "wife beater", smelling like he's never heard of deoderant, came to the door and said, "Yeah, what is it?" "Would you be interested in selling that Charger out back?" asked Jason's dad. "NO!!" The man replied very sharply. "I'm gonna fix that up one day", he said as he closed the door. My friend and I looked at each other and just rolled our eyes, thinking YEAH RIGHT! Jason's dad was pretty upset, but Jason was'nt deterred. "I'll get him to sell it", he said.

For two years Jason rode out to the old farmhouse on his motorcycle to look at the car, and to try to convince the owner to sell it. His dad would also go out to talk the guy into selling it, but the fat stinky dopehead would hear none of it. "I've got plans for that car" he would say. Throughout these two years I started to hear more about the owner. He got the car through a trade in 1980 (a drug trade probably) , drove it twice and parked it. He was a real waste of human skin. A drunk, and a drug addict; he would beat up on his wife and throw wild drug parties. I told Jason he'd better just forget about that car, before he ends up pissing the guy off. You don't wanna get into trouble with a deadbeat like that! Jason loved that car, and could not imagine owning anything else. After a while though he started to get frustrated and eventually gave up on the Charger. One night in the local bar I ran into the guy who owned it. I said to the guy "Dude, why don't you just sell that thing to the kid? It was his dad's car when he was in high school, and they are just lookin for a father son project, and what better project than his dad's old ride?" He said "why don't you mind your own business and shut the hell up!" Like I said, this guy was a real jerk. The best part of this guy ran down his mom's leg.

When Jason was a senoir in high school his dad was diagnosed with heart disease, and he became more distant, and did'nt really bother with people that much anymore. Jason's dad died 2 weeks after he graduated. My buddies and I attended the funeral, and while outside smoking a cigarette Jason told us that his dad said he regretted selling that Charger. Jason even mentioned the car in his eulogy. A picture of him and his wife sitting on the hood of it the day they met was placed inside the casket. My friend and I were deepely saddened, and extremely pissed at the same time. Here was a good kid who wanted nothing more than to work on a car with his dad. Not just any car, the car his dad met his mom in, with hopes of having the same kind of memories, and perhaps meeting his own wife in, just like his dad did 27 years ago. But instead a perfectly good car goes to waste on a piece of trash scumbag, who does'nt care about anything but his own selfish desires.

Jason went on to join the military and was shipped out to Iraq. He served two years, before he was killed when his Hummer ran over a landmine in 2004. Just before he was killed, he wrote me a letter saying he still thinks about that Charger and asked if the car was still there. I told him that it was, and probaly will be when he gets home. Unfortunately, he never got the letter, as he was killed just 2 days after I mailed it. What happened to the Charger? Well, the guy was shot by the police during a drug raid at the farmhouse, and his wife was sent up for 15 years on drug charges. The cops condemned the property with the Charger still sitting in the same place it was 10 years ago. I tried to buy it from the county, so I could restore it as a tribute to my old friend. But I could never get in touch with the right people. Last spring I went out to the property to see if I just take the damn thing, but the car was gone along with the house. The whole property had been leveled. Two months later, while at the junkyard looking for a part for my truck, I found that old Charger. It was buried in a stack of crushed cars getting ready to be loaded onto the flat bed bound for the shredder. It was still complete, right down to the old Crane Cams license plate. It just about brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. Remembering how excited Jason was when he first saw it, and how he talked about how cool it would be to work on it with his dad. I do seek a little comfort in thinking that he and his father are in heaven right now wrenching on the old Charger they so desperately wanted to have. So the next time a kid and his dad shows up at your door asking to sell that old car rotting away in the backyard, think about this story before you say "I'm gonna fix that up some day", knowing you most likely never will. If someone is willing to put forth the effort to get it back on the road again, is'nt that a whole lot better than letting go to waste just because you don't want someone else to have it? There's no shame in letting someone else build a lifetime's worth of memories with the same car you built your memories in.

[jb666]

Cool story, and all too common.

I have a buddy that's been trying to buy a '69 GTO off this old guy.. It's been sitting in a barn rotting for years. The old guy won't even return the voicemails left to him so we know that this car will just sit in the barn until it disintegrates...

[Rolling_Thunder]

Cool story, and all too common.

I have a buddy that's been trying to buy a '69 GTO off this old guy.. It's been sitting in a barn rotting for years. The old guy won't even return the voicemails left to him so we know that this car will just sit in the barn until it disintegrates...

go acquire it one night   

[jb666]

Cool story, and all too common.

I have a buddy that's been trying to buy a '69 GTO off this old guy.. It's been sitting in a barn rotting for years. The old guy won't even return the voicemails left to him so we know that this car will just sit in the barn until it disintegrates...

go acquire it one night   

We joked about that.. It's a really cool car, I saw pictures of it..

[69_500]

There are plenty of stories of people actually getting the car that they have been wanting for years too. Take Alex Williams, he stopped at the same ladies house for something like 14 years and was asking about the C500 that they had sitting in the driveway. Eventually he was still stopping by, but just to visit the people, and do chores for them as they were getting up in their years. Even driving them to the grocery store and such. As time grew on he was a very close friend to the people, and had given up hope of getting the car, but was still stopping to visit. One day they asked him if he still wanted the car and he said yes. Now he is the proud owner of one of the 4 known 69 Charger 500 SE's with A/C.

I've been hounding the same gentleman for probably close to 15 years to sell me his Charger 500 as well. The  car hasn't moved but 1 time in the last 36 years. He keeps saying he is going to fix it up someday, but I doubt it. Good thing is though that I know that it isn't going anywhere anytime soon either though.

[69DodgeCharger]

Does it count if it's in the garage like mine (10+ years)

[tan top]

good but sad story   ...every time i look at rusted wrecks on  cars in barn type sites  .....all them cars have got a story to tell i bet ..if they could talk   

[WingCharger]

Good story man.
Wish I could find a roting car like that. (Just the owner would sell. )

A 383 R/T?

[68charger383]

I had a 70 440+6 track pack Cuda, which I sold in 1996 for similar circumstances. I put the car in my garage due to some engine problems in the early 1990s and went off to school out of state.

My Sister came home and needed to use the garage for storage and my car was moved out into the 100 degree NY Summers and "0" + winters. I had a cover on the car, but it would blow off etc. after about two years, rust started coming through on the dutchman panel/rear window and trunk.

I realized it was time for it to go. By the time I would have gotten to it, it would have been pretty messed up since I lived across the country and it would be another 4-5 years before I could afford to mess with the car. So I ended up selling the car (always had plenty of people stopping by to see if it was for sale). It was tough, but I knew I couldn't let the car get destroyed just sitting there.

Some people just need to face facts and let things go...........if the car is sitting there rotting away, it should be sold to someone who will begin to work on it.

[bigcountry]

I have seen a wing car in a partially collapsed barn, you now can only see part of the nose cone sticking out.  You can't get close enough to the barn to see it, we snuck in one night on 4-wheelers through the mountains behind the guys house to get a look......he has dogs ....big ones, so we didn't get a look at it.  I had my Dad and Uncle inquire about it several times and the guy don't even want to talk about it.  Neighbors say "There where two of them old cars in there at one time, He sold one and regrets it."  Now there is no way to get the other one even tough it is in a partially collapsed barn, rotting away .

[mikesbbody]

Sad story  even sadder was the fact it was the best charger ever made a 71 RT 4 speed!!!

[C_stripes]

I was not aware that they made 71 383 4spd chargers? hmm.  Good story though. I also noticed that he said that the kid died in 04 but then he says ten years later. Maybe I just miss understood it, 

Here's another reason.
69 GTX Jamaica Blue 440 4spd Dana air grabber car







Just because you have them stored someplace safe, they are not always safe.

[Old Moparz]

There's another version of that story, where the kid & the dad were flippers making a killing by getting people to believe sob stories. 


Back in high school I knew this kid named Jason Cheatem. He was a pretty shifty kid, always wanted to be a gearhead just like me and my other friends, but he didn't know what a screwdriver was. He wasn't part of "my circle" as he was a few years younger than us, (14 actually) but we knew him, and he hung around with us from time to time. He thought we were the coolest guys in school (we really were...LOL!!) cuz we all had cool old musclecars. All Jason wanted was to snag a neat old car for next to nothing to flip with his dad (they were very close) and laugh on the weekends, about how they found another sucker.

My buddy and I knew of an old Charger that was sitting behind a house out in the country. It was about a 71 or 72, black with black interior, automatic, rusty pitted, and peeling Cragars, rotted side-pipes, pop riveted on hood scoop, shackled to the sky, with a set of traction bars, and a faded Crane Cams license plate on the front. It was a real 70's looking hot rod. Sitting in the weeds next to a dilapidated wooden shed, behind an old ramshackle farmhouse. I first saw it when I was 7, and when I was a senior in high school it was still there.

We took Jason out there one afternoon to check it out & bet him $10 he couldn't buy it. I'll never forget his reaction when he saw it for the first time. "OH MY GOD!!!, Dude I HAVE to have that car! it's got profit written all over it." he screamed as he jumped out of the car and went running over to it. "It's perfect!" he said. "This is the same kind of car my dad bought cheap & sold for twice as much to some dumb sucker when he was in high school. I can just imagine how awesome it would be to flip this with him." We knocked on the door, but no one was home.

A few days later Jason came up to us in the hall at school and told us that the Charger was in fact same car his dad first flipped! We were a little surprised, cuz we knew Jason's dad, our dads knew him and we never heard stories of him flipping a Charger back in school. Turns out, Jason's dad bought the car used in 71 with only a few hundred miles on it for $25 from this old guy who needed money for food. It was a 71 R/T with a 426 Hemi and a 4 speed. He made a huge profit on it, never drove it & the money allowed him to buy other cars cheap. A few years later, he met his wife (telling a story about it to her in the bar while she was doing her gold digger thing) They got married & bought a lot of stuff cheap off needy people together.

The kid he sold it to went broke because he talked him into buying it for $3000 with the money he was going to pay his property tax on so his parents can save the family farm. Jason's dad never saw the kid or the car again, the kid moved into a homeless shelter & the car was repossessed. After school that day, my buddy and I took Jason and his dad out to see the car and his dad was just as pumped as Jason was when he saw it. "I'll be damned", he said "that's the first car I flipped!". Aside from the missing 4 speed, it was just as it was when he sold it, a real overpriced POS. The "Kelly Supercharger" tires were still on it! He said he stole those tires June 10th 1975. He remembered that because it was the same day he met his wife.

We knocked on the door and a poor old woman answered the door. "Is your husband home?", Jason asked her. "Ummm...... yeah" she said, as she adjusted her worn out dentures. Jason and his dad had looks on their faces like little kids at Christmas waiting for the man to come to the door. Just then a very scruffy looking guy, in ripped pants & worn out shoes came to the door and said, "Yeah, what is it?" "Would you be interested in selling that Charger out back?" asked Jason's dad. "NO!!" The man replied very sharply. "I promised it to my brother so he & his wife can trade it for food", he said as he closed the door. My friend and I looked at each other and just rolled our eyes, thinking YEAH RIGHT! Jason's dad was pretty upset since he knew it would be tough to get cheap, but Jason wasn't deterred. "I'll get him to sell it", he said.

For two years Jason rode out to the old farmhouse on his motorcycle to look at the car, and to try to convince the owner that his brother died already from starvation. His dad would also go out to talk the guy into selling it, but the poor farming couple would hear none of it. "I've got plans for that car" he would say. Throughout these two years I started to hear more about the owner. He got the car through a trade in 1980 for heating oil, drove it twice and parked it when his failed eye sight made him give up driving. He was real poor, couldn't afford the drugs his wife needed for her diabetes.

Jason loved that car, and could not imagine flipping anything else. After a while though he started to get frustrated and eventually got serious about getting the Charger. One night in the local food pantry, I ran into the guy who owned it. I said to the guy "Dude, why don't you just sell that thing to the kid? It was his dad's car when he was in high school, and they are just lookin for a father son project, and what better project than his dad's old ride?" He said "why don't you tell your friend to stop by, my wife's legs are gonna be amputated next week & I need some cash.

When Jason was a Senior in high school his dad went to jail for forgery, and he became more distant, and didn't really bother with people that much anymore. Jason's dad got 2 years after he graduated. My buddies and I attended the sentencing and while outside smoking a cigarette Jason told us that his dad said he regretted selling that Charger. Jason even mentioned the car to the judge in hopes he'd go easy, but the judge didn't care & sent him up. A picture of him and his wife sitting on the hood of it the day they met was even shown.

My friend and I were deeply saddened, and extremely pissed at the same time. Here was a good con artist kid who wanted nothing more than to work on flipping a car with his dad. Not just any car, the car his dad met his mom over, with hopes of having the same kind of memories, and perhaps meeting his own wife flipping it, just like his dad did 27 years ago. But instead a perfectly good car goes to waste on some foreclosed farm, & the farmer who doesn't care about anything but his own selfish desire to get an operation for his wife.

Jason went on to join the investment firm Madoff owned, but got nailed selling fake stocks. He served two years, before he was killed by some big guy in prison for refusing to be his bitch in 2004. Just before he was killed, he wrote me a letter saying he still thinks about that Charger and asked if the car was still there. I told him that it was, and probably will be when he gets out. Unfortunately, he never got the letter, as he was killed just 2 days after I mailed it. What happened to the Charger? Well, the old guy who owned it was shot by the police during an IRS raid at the farmhouse when they tried to seize the property for back taxes, and his wife died because she never got the diabetes medicine she needed.

The cops condemned the property with the Charger still sitting in the same place it was 10 years ago. I tried to buy it from the county, so I could flip it on ebay as a tribute to my old friend. But I could never get in touch with the right people. Last spring I went out to the property to see if I just take the damn thing, but the car was gone along with the house. The whole property had been leveled. Two months later, while at the Chryslers at Carlisle show looking for a part for my truck, I found that old Charger. It was sold & getting ready to be loaded onto the flat bed bound for the Barrett Jackson Auction.

It was still complete, right down to the old Crane Cams license plate. It just about brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. Remembering how excited Jason was when he first saw it, and how he talked about how cool it would be to work on flipping it with his dad. I do seek a little comfort in thinking that he and his father are in another place right now, probably hell, wrenching their brains out on the old Charger they so desperately wanted to have. So the next time a kid and his dad shows up at your door asking to sell that old car rotting away in the backyard, think about this story before you say "I'm desperate, how much will you give me?", knowing you most likely never will get a decent amount of money from a flipper.

If someone is willing to put forth the effort to get all of you hard earned money, isn't that a whole lot better than dying from the cops when they show up to take all your stuff? There's always shame in letting someone else take advantage of your misfortune.

[69DodgeCharger]

that was classic!

[The70RT]

Oh $hit............

[mikesbbody]

I was not aware that they made 71 383 4spd chargers? hmm.  Good story though. I also noticed that he said that the kid died in 04 but then he says ten years later. Maybe I just miss understood it, 

The story is starting to sound like a bunch of B.S to me! I hope so anyway  they did have 383 4 speed charger's in 71. The one that comes to my mind is the 71 super bee 766 of them not sure about the other models and no 383's in 71 RT's.

[C_stripes]

I was not aware that they made 71 383 4spd chargers? hmm.  Good story though. I also noticed that he said that the kid died in 04 but then he says ten years later. Maybe I just miss understood it, 

The story is starting to sound like a bunch of B.S to me! I hope so anyway  they did have 383 4 speed charger's in 71. The one that comes to my mind is the 71 super bee 766 of them not sure about the other models and no 383's in 71 RT's.

I meant R/T's.  Sorry.

[mikesbbody]

I see.. in that case your are 100% correct no 383 RT chargers in 71