Not a story from the 60`s or 70`s but from 1981. I bought a 1969 Dart Swinger 340 from a guy in the neighborhood that had the car just sitting out on the street in front of the neighborhood grocery store. I had a 1968 Firebird with a 389 and 3 2bbls that I had traded for a 1968 Dart Western Sports Special with a trusty slant six that I bought for $400.00. The guy with the dart lived aross the street from the grocery store and I would often see him and his buddies hanging out in the garage wrenching on cars mostly gm products. Everytime I went to that store he would eyeball the firechicken and I would look at the Dart. One day he came out and asked if I wanted to sell the bird and I said sure if that Dart is for sale. We ended up trading and I ended up pushing the dart a block away to my house due to a bad transmission. Turned out the guy bought the Dart from the original owner with about 150,000 on the clock and beat the crap out of it. He actually painted the car white over the faded Y2 yellow with a spray can and it looked pretty beat. It was completly original and I was a happy camper as I now had my first factory high performance mopar. I ended up pulling the trans in the street and had it rebuilt with a nice shift kit. I gave it a complete tune up with new wires and all and it roarded to life. Once it was running I quickly realized it also needed a 3rd member as the original 323`s were clunking. I swapped them out for a set of junk yard 391`s and all was well. Me and a buddy of mine were out cruising the streets of San Francisco one night when we decided to head down the penisula to San Mateo where they had a big cruise every Friday & Saturday night on the El Camino Real. We drove down and cruised the main street for a bit and though my Dart sounded good it looked a bit rough, actually the original vinyl top was ripped/shredded and a good portion of it was missing. We came across 4 guys in a 66 Chevelle SS 396 that was painted candy apple red with stripes that sounded hot and looked good, and these guys started yelling out the window with the mopars are -rap -hit and wanted to race. Well up untill that point I had never raced anyone in my life and was a bit nervous. We came to a red light and we were side by side. I heard him rev his engine so I held the brake and brought the rpms up a bit and shifted into low. When the light turned green he passed me and made it across the intersection first. But I was catching him and when I hit second my little dart pulled away from the Chevelle badly. Pulled into a station a couple of blocks away and the guys in the Chevelle followed. They jumped out of the car and said what do you have under the hood? You should have seen their faces when they all saw that greasy stock 340 sitting in the hole even with its factory aircleaner still in place. My buddy looked at them all and said you guys just got stung by the Dodge Scat Pack and Chevys Suck! This is my story and I am sticking to it.
