The article in MCG is totally screwed up as far as the documentation of the car goes...The history of this car is filled with so many inaccuracies, rumors of fact and wishful thinking on someone’s part. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, and I am not going to speculate on it, as I have had no contact with the guy that bought it since I sold it. The facts stated below are what I told the guy I sold the car to. I hope the car has not been represented as anything other than this, but it sounds like it has.
To start with, I bought the car from Andy in 1996, not 1970 as the article stated. Andy can post the timeframes of when he owned the car, and if I recall, he also knew a few of the previous owners. But the story of the car from 1996 forward is this:
I bought the car and a 6-cylinder Dart WSS parts car from Andy and towed it to my house in San Diego from Lancaster, CA. It was not close to being a running car as the article stated. And I sure as heck wasn't the 1st, 2nd or even 3rd owner of the car. I don't know how many hands the car passed through (registered or not), but maybe Andy can give a better guess to that than I can.
The engine was partially assembled and sitting in the engine bay, the interior was sitting loosely inside the car, and the trunk was full of parts...
The car was painted light blue, but was originally dark green. It had the white tail stripe, as we found a small piece of the tape stripe in the trunk gutter.
One thing I want to be clear on, is that there is no documentation of anything that was stated in the MCG article. PERIOD!!!
1. Rumor, NOT fact. That the car came from Saddleback Dodge. There is NO documentation that the car came from Saddleback Dodge. No sales order, contract, nothing. This is just an undocumented "rumor". The Saddleback Dodge license plate frames that went with the car came from a friend of mine's car, a maroon 68 Dart (I traded a set of Direct Connection license plate frames for them). The CA license plates were bought from another friend of mine and are not original to the car (the car had NO license plates when I bought it).
2. Andy gave me a XEROX of the article in the Car Craft magazine. I tracked down several copies of the magazine. I met Mr. Norm at the SEMA show one year and talked to him about the car. He could not remember even what color the car was for the original CC article. He was really nice and we spoke for 15-20 minutes. He signed the copy of the magazine for me, but he DID NOT say my car was the car from the article. Once I had purchased the car, I contacted Petersen Publishing (Car Craft magazine) and asked if they had any documentation on the car. They stated they had NO documentation that would validate that this was the car used in the article (VIN, Bill of Sale, etc.). Since there are no color photos of the car in the article, it can really only be stated that the car in the article looks to be a medium/dark colored car (the pictures from CC appear to be of a much lighter car when you look at the original article and compare them to the pictures in the MCG article on page 69). Car Craft even ran my question for documentation of the car in their magazine in 1996 (I don’t remember which month). I got no response from anyone.
3. There was no broadcast sheet or fender tag with the car. Galen had the fender tag made up for the owner I sold the car to. If I remember right, Andy said he found the interior in a GTS in a wrecking yard in Lancaster (correct me if I'm wrong Andy), so the original broadcast sheet was missing when he bought the car.
4. The engine is the matching VIN to the car (picture posted in this thread earlier), the transmission I gave the next owner was a 69 440 HP by the part number, but not matching numbers to the car (I'm not sure what transmission was used in the car though) that I bought.
5. 383 exhaust manifolds went with the car, not 440 manifolds. I could not find a set of 440 manifolds for sale that I could afford at the time.
6. Even the AM radio came from the parts car...so it may/may not be correct for the car. Not sure what was used for the VON on the fender tag either.
I spent several years and a lot of $$$ buying NOS for the car.
I took the car to a friend's body shop (Hot Rod Hell) for what was going to be a light cosmetic restoration back to more of a street/race car. As we tore the car apart, we realized the car had been cut up a lot more for racing than we initially expected. I spent a ton of $$$ having the quarters replaced, rear wheel wells repaired, inner fender panels replaced, rear seat braces put back in, firewall repaired, holes welded, console braces installed, etc. using parts cut from the parts car. I have pictures from the restoration that I have. I did give a set to the next owner of the car.
My friend closed his body shop due to health reasons before the car was finished, so we loaded the body on a dolly and hauled it home. I was getting ready to move to AZ at the time and decided to sell the car disassembled, even though I was taking a pretty big loss...that is when the car went to TX to be restored.
Galen inspected the car at that time at the request of the new owner, not at my request. Again, the fender tag was made after I sold the car.
The shop in TX redid much of the work I had done. I had many of the suspension/steering components powder-coated because I was planning on driving the car. The shop in TX redid all that... I had also painted the whole undercarriage of the car. The shop in TX redid everything I had done to the car up to that point.
If anyone has any specific questions, please feel free to ask them either here (PM) or through email. I am not on everyday, but will answer any specific questions to the best of my knowledge as soon as I can.
Hey Andy, maybe we should sit down and write a history of the car... 8-)
I don't want to imply the car is real or not (it is a real M code Dart, just the fact of whether or not it is the CC Magazine Drag Test car). I only want to state that there is no factual documentation of the history of the car (that I had). Andy may know more, but as far as I know there is no "paperwork" on the car to document any of what was stated in the article.
