At 16 years old, I came into a free 74 Dodge Dart 4-door. It was a bone stock 318. It would smoke
the tires wonderfully!
This was my first car. The owner had brought it into my Dad's shop
looking for an idea of what it needed. He told the guy what was wrong with it and also told him not to take it on a trip or
it would most likely break down. The next day the old guy broke down in the center of town. He had the car towed to my father
and handed him the title! A couple hundred dollars worth of parts, a good scrubbing of 10 years of nicotine from the interior
and a wash job and I was cruising to high school!
So about eight months later another guy owed dad for some work
he had done on his Coronet taxi. As payment, he gave dad a 71 Dart Swinger with a blown 225 slant six (I didn't think that
was possible). We took another 225 from a Volare taxi, with a mere 500,000 miles on it, and dropped it in. Ran great....Burned
oil.
I had sold the first Dart to the dispatcher at the taxi company.
About nine months later, the same guy bought my second Dart because my Barracuda years had begun.
