I'm a bit younger than most around here, so my first Mopar experience was as a teenager in 2005 outside our local depressed mall. A friend was throwing a rock show in an empty store, and out back one of the guys had a '68 440 R/T Charger in B5 blue that sounded incredible and shot flames. It left an impression. A couple years later I bought a '72 Valiant, and then a '74 Duster, and then a '73 Scamp (from the guy with the Charger,) and then about 10 more A-bodies. And then trucks. And any other Chrysler product I could get my hands on. Eventually I bought my '66 Charger (with factory 361) which I own to this day. My daughter came home in the car. I don't think I could ever part with it. It is currently set up for daily driver duties and has a 1999 Dodge Ram drivetrain, complete with fuel injection and the overdrive automatic, but I am scheming to go back to a big block and add a four speed at some point. I now own and operate my own shop, and though we work on everything my real passion is fixing classic Mopars. We are currently restoring a '78 W200 crew cab.
My most recent Mopar experience was acquiring a '55 Plymouth Plaza sedan - the car that brought me to this site. It showed up on a Facebook classic car group, and the gentleman wanted to trade it for a pickup. My offer of a (different) '78 W200 with a big block was the only real offer, and he agreed to trade. I loaded the Power Wagon on a trailer and towed it behind my '99 Ram (with a Cummins and its third automatic transmission) several hours down to Longview the back way - it was a little heavy. When we arrived, the gentleman hardly looked at the Power Wagon, and we set about making the Plaza run again after several years. The car had a Chinese electronic distributor, which hadn't been installed correctly, but even with that solved refused to make spark due to the pickup being trash. We found the original Chrysler distributor in the trunk, scraped the points and had the flathead running in about twenty minutes. I drove it around the block and loaded it up, and since bringing it home I have tinkered with it a good bit and driven it around town. The paint is faded and not the correct shade of blue, but the seats have been recovered and there is no rust to speak of, which is quite uncommon in this area. I'm used to getting looks in old cars, but the attention the Plaza brings is somewhat startling. The flathead purrs at this point, but strangely will not rev past about 2000 RPM. More on that later...
