Dad was into cars, and his pride and joy from his youth was his ’52 Desoto coupe with the Firedome Hemi. He kept the car till he was gone, even though my older brother rolled it with me in it in 1967. Unfortunately, Dad was never able to fix it.

I think due to my dad, I was into learning, identifying, model building and match box plus Hot Wheels cars like others, but what sealed the deal for me at 13 years of age in 1973, on fast Mopars, was an 850 mile ride in my cousins 1969 Charger R/T with several memorable moments along the way.

In 1977, my first car was a ’70 300, 2dr w/440 and console shift 727, 3:23 limited slip that I had to repair due to a blown engine (hole in piston). Bought a short block. Still have that engine actually. It served duty in that car, a 69 D100, a 78 D150, and lastly a 75 D300 crew cab.

I looked at, test drove and wished for many of the “Muscle Mopars” at cheap prices in the late 70’s and early 80’s, as I tried to get into it in my early adulthood, but have managed to only own one muscle, but many other Mopars over the years. That very 69 R/T, of that memorable ride, is the one I have owned since 1984.

I guess I could count my 2012 SRT8 as my second muscle Mopar. Bought 30 years to the month after my 69. Suppose if I had more time and money, there would be a whole long list of them. There are far more on my bucket list than I will ever own. I suspect this is true for many, if not most of us.

P.S. Maybe, in a very loose definition, my 78 D150 that sported a built 440 along with an A833 qualified as muscle.Sure had a lot of fun building it and driving it.

I didnt really grow up around a car / mopar family. My parents drove what ever they got the best deal on at the time they needed it .

I got into model cars very early on ( early / mid 60s time frame )
One day from riding my bike on the road I lived on ,,, I spotted a blue on blue 1969 Road Runner for sale . it was a 383 , column auto for $150 and drove it home. ( summer of 1977 or so )
Blue was my favorite color and the price was right, It was also all I had from the summer job I had at the time.
I had seen a few of them around and liked the body style . There was bright green 69 RR in my high school parking lot that belonged to a guy a few years ahead of me, I found out later it was a Hemi car ( I would own that car several years later btw ,, )

But anyway ,,,,,That blue car needed parts and that lead to becoming friends with a local guy who was a year ahead of me that owned a limegreen Superbird in my junior year of high school. And still good friends to this day btw

Been hooked on Mopar ever since. Ive had a BUNCH over the years, Mostly B bodies, a few A bodies . Just never had much interest in the E body cars. Ive only owned 2, a 71 Gran Coupe Barracuda and a 70 Challenger 340 .

I had started my first resto ever on a 64 1/2 Mustang. My buddy, you may know him as R/TDaddy, stopped by as said "you don't need to be working on that P.O.S. You need a real car". Off to the junk yard we went and found a original 1974 440/auto Charger Rallye. Next thing I know there's 5 Chargers in my yard. Kids came and I sold 3. The 2 I kept are still on the road.

Family. Dad loved cars, though he never had anything "collectible" himself. He did as much of his own work himself as he could, including rebuilding the straight six in our families 1st second car (seeing that engine apart and all it's little parts organized on a sheet on the garage floor is what I think really got me hooked. His Dad had a '53 Imperial with Hemi, and a 1926 Dodge. Grandpa, Dad and all us 3 boys always talked cars around the dinner table at birthdays, holidays, etc. Still do.

My oldest brother turned his new '75 Dart Hang 10 into a Street Machine in the late '70s, and took me places with him. We also had the Street Machine Nationals in town(or near by) for many years. This picture captures just a glimpse of my brothers Hang 10 on the far left at the Nats in Springfield, his friend and custom painter in the red S-10 next to him, and another friend with the 427 dual quad 4 speed Bisacyne next to that. There were others they ran with, and they always let me hang around, go to shows with them, etc.

I grew up in a car town(mostly Chevy and Ford autoworkers from Cleveland) and there were a lot of muscle cars in my neighborhood. I first started noticing cars in the mid to late 60's when I heard open headers on the drag cars on my street. One was a 68 Barracuda with a 426 HEMI not sure if it was an original though he did work at the Chrysler/Plymouth dealer in town. My older sister had a boyfriend with an M/P 67 Camaro that got me hooked on stick car racing. It was a high-winding 290" small block with a Doug Nash 5-speed and he would leave the line at 8000 on the rear bumper and man that left a lasting impression on a 10 year old boy. After that I started drawing cars doing wheel stands and I couldn't get enough of going to the legendary Dragway 42 and Thompson strips.
We also had a local celebrity named Lou Sattelmaier with an injected 426 HEMI in a 32 Ford coupe with Zoomies and I was in love with that car.

Gus

My dad worked at Chrysler Engineering in Highland Park, so it sort of started there. Mopar, or no car without question. Part of his job was to take blueprints to various prototype supplier shops on the area, and he would often stop home midday in brand new cars from their engineering pool car fleet, taking my buddies and I for rides (a definite no-no in today's world) in the back of 65 Barracuda's or Dart convertibles, then eventually Road Runners, Bee's, etc. Dad wasn't really a car guy per se, but always kept our family car fastidiously clean and serviced by the dealer. Those Saturday morning oil change trips to the dealer, and dad relenting to my pleas to get 'something bad for me' from the catering truck in service, are memories like no other. But, what really got me hooked though, were the guys in the neighborhood (1969 in Detroit and 15 years old) who were a few years older than me, that all had muscle cars. 390 4 speed Mustang GT, 68 GTO 4 speed, 68 Road Runner 383 4 speed, 64 Comet Caliente 2+2 289 hipo 4 speed, 69 Mach 1, 69 GTX 440 4 speed, and on and on. They were EVERYWHERE! My first ride in that Road Runner? Tom double clutched it, nailed it and we went sideways through 1st through 3rd gear. Scared the crap outta me and excited me beyond words at the same time! Stories? Yeah, like most, I've got dozens, but I'll spare you the details, and just say, it was some of the best times I recall growing up.

family here, too. But it wasn't brand-specific. I came home as a newborn in a '56 Plymouth wagon, as far as Dad's Mopars I recall a '60 Plymouth Wagon, '59 Imperial Crown, '63 Imperial LeBaron, '66 Imperial Crown, '69 New Yorker HT sedan, '72 New Yorker coupe, a couple of O24/TC3 Sport models.
And a BUNCH of weird stuff:
Alfa Romeo 2600 , 2 Metropolitans, a Goggomobil TS400, Biachini Transformibile, Citroen DS19 and assorted cars & trucks that just sort of "came & went".
My brother is 10 years older than I. Here's a few of his cars I remember: '70 Coronet with a lift off hood, '69 440 'Runner, '68 'Runner 383, '70 AAR lime green, a crazy /6 Dart with some sort of high rise intake that stuck the carb through the hood, and for non-Mopars a gray LS6 '70 Chevelle, no less that 15 '70 SS Chevelles, a REAL Ram Air IV '70 Goat, on and on and on and on...And he was the kind of brother that would throw the 18 year-old me the keys to any one of these things. I think he either loved me or was trying to kill me. My favorite was a '68 Charger R/T LOADED with options, Omaha orange, white butt stripe, interior & top. Good Gawd, it was a purdy one.
So here's me & Johnny at Dillon Dam and he tells the 14 year-old me "I'm drunk. You're driving home". I had driven on some back roads and fields but never on main roads. So I guess I'm driving. And what am I driving? A 1969 Road Runner, 440 4-speed, jacked up, 10" Cragars, bright orange with this crazy graphic on the quarter panel and the name "Optical Illusion" painted on the side in gold leaf. Yeah, we're not too conspicuous. So off I go, lurching through the gears, about 20 miles to our place on Buckeye Lake. I only stalled it once. Right in front of a cop at the intersection of Rt 40 & Rt 13. No harm no foul.
So I guess that's what started me along the path that I follow to this day. I have a deep affection and great memories of all things Mopar, but Dad instilled in me a love of all sorts of offbeat cars. I have owned about 175 cars and the types and makes are all over the board.

my earliest memory was when i was about 18 months old [as confirmed by my parents].
we lived in a second story apartment with a super small porch off the kitchen. it had a solid railing all around with about a 3-4" gap above the floor deck, just enough to see out of, but not fall through.
my mom would shove me out there to escape from me a couple of times a day, and i always had a toy car of some sorts to amuse me while i was there.
one day, i watched as my toy car ran through the crack at the bottom of the railing, and landed on the drive way below, which in those days, consisted of two strips of concrete with grass in the middle.
while i was observing my car on the drive way, who should come home but the landlord, "old man mckinley".
i watched in horror as he drove right over my car, flattening it like a pancake !
i left out a scream, and mom came running to my aid !
all i could do to explain between tears was "car ! car !" and point through the crack. finally, she understood me and gave me another toy car to play with, but the die had been cast.
after that episode, my mom made sure she bought me cereal that had cars inside, and when enough box tops were saved, she sent them off to get whatever "vehicle set" was being offered at the time. i sure wished i had kept a few of those toys !

later in life, my old man and grandpa, plus several uncles, built a house next to grandpa and we moved in to it in 1959. gramps liked to tinker with his 1946 buick and allowed me to help.
i learned quickly that old buick straight eight liked spark plugs ! then, in 1965, my old man bought a new '66 valiant, and the rest is history.
in 1968, i went to work for a body shop, bought my charger through the shop in 1970, started a junkyard with my buddy in 1972, and today, i'm retired and old.

My Dad was a mechanic and hotrodder from way back. All he had were Pontiacs & Oldsmobiles when he was younger. He went to work at DeKalb Chrysler-Plymouth in '65 or '66. His first Mopar was a '67 Belvedere II s/w he bought new for Mom to haul us 4 kids around in. IIRC, he started driving the '57 Olds (tri-power) that had been Mom's car. Several years later he bought a '65 Valiant 100 sedan, 170 /6 & 3 on the tree for his DD. In 1970 this became my first car. During the winter of '70 he told my Mom he was afraid I was going to get run over with that little /6 and he was going to put a 273 in it. Turned out to be a 340 from a '68 'cuda and the rest is history.
I should note that the first model car I put together around '64 or 5 was a Hemi under Glass Barracuda.



Tim

I grew up in a Mopar family. My dad worked at Chrysler Corporation, from 1964 to late 1985 (when he was too sick to work anymore, terminal illness). He was a supervisor in the department at Highland Park headquarters, that created the IBM Tab punch cards, for the production of vehicles. He owned a '64 Catalina 389 4 bbl, turqiose 2 door coupe, just before he got into Chrysler. That's the car my parents brought me home from the hospital in.

After, while working for Chrysler, family came first, so from then on it was just station wagon's, and other daily drivers...all Mopars though of course.
A year after I graduated high school, a co-worker of my dad was selling his '69 300 convertible, My dad brought home the flyer from the dept. bulletin board, and
asked if I was interested in that car. We went to look at it, and the rest is history, I bought the car, and eventually restored it. Unfortunately dad never saw it
finished, as he passed away in March of '86. My brother now owns my old 300.

I had older friends, who owned some cool cars while growing up, but I give credit to my dad for my being in the car hobby today...thanks dad!

Short story: My Father

Longer story: Since before I can remember there were various car magazines around the house in plain sight. Then, around 1986, my Dad bought a project 1962 Dodge Dart. Soon afterward, I would help my Dad disassemble a 440 engine for this car. From that point on, it was in my blood. A few years later when I was 16, I saw a 1968 Dodge Charger that I knew I had to have. Working part-time at the carwash, my Dad co-signed for a loan to purchase the car. Now, today, I'm working on a 1969 Road Runner, and Dad still has the Dart...

Honestly it was TNN playing Dukes of Hazzard reruns in the mid 90s, I got into Chargers and the rest of the Mopar family just seemed so right.

I grew up in a Mopar family (both sides, actually).

My Dad's family included his 1976 Power Wagon (now mine) that he bought new.
Also had my Grandpa's 72 Imperial LeBaron that he bought new (still in the family).
My other Grandpa drove Chryslers most of his life as well.
My mother had AMC and Chrysler products most of the time as well (AMC Pacer, Dodge Aspen, etc)
I got my first pickup in Jan 1996 (1976 Dodge Power Wagon, not my Dad's but a similar one) and was hooked from that point on.
My great-uncle on my Mom's side also had an early 60s Dart, and a 73 Imperial LeBaron, and a 69 Dodge pickup.
As stated, lots in the extended family.
A few friends and family members bought GM and Ford products, but they always seemed to either have problems or they would trade every few years. Meanwhile, my family's Chrysler products just kept on going.

JS

I grew up in the Metro Detroit car rich culture. In 72-73 time frame (I was all of 10 years old) my 19 year old neighbor brought home a 71 Cuda 340. Much the same as the photo attached. His prior car was a Triple black 69 Formula S 340 Cuda.
These two cars left a lasting impression on me. I got my first Mopar Muscle Car at 18. It was a 69 383 Road Runner R4 red, white bucket seat interior, white top, spring special. I have been hooked ever since.

Had to be Hot Wheels as I had almost all of them. Born in 65' I remember riding around in the back of my folks cars. We lived near a military base in GA and it seemed the guys always had really cool cars as we would be sitting at a light and something always was pulling up making a lot of noise. Noise get's attention and it did from me. I don't recall too many specific cars but I do remember seeing fastback Barracuda's, a Cyclone like the one I own today, and of course Mustangs and Camaro's. My one major memory was as a 5 year old going to the Plymouth dealer as dad was buying a used 69 300 off their lot. We walked into the showroom to sign the paperwork and there it sat, a 70 RR with a Coyote doll splayed across the hood. I recall the man directing my dad to sit down at the desk and me pulling on his pant leg saying "Dad, don't do it. This is the car you want". Sadly, my dad was a minister and driving a RR was not in the cards.

my dad was into cars either i be mopar.ford or gm and always went to local race tracks plus my uncle ran dirt track had a small junk yard and did automotive work . but when dad picked up a 66 dodge dart gt 273 4 speed that was it mainly all mopar for me ...............
on another note gus that lou`s car was one of my favs as a kid (photos not mine)

One additional piece as I have had some e-mail conversations this week with my uncle (not really my uncle - his father married my grandmother shortly after I was born). Rob is the only other real car guy in the family. I didn't see him much while growing up (they sent him off to military school...) and my parents were afraid that he'd be a bad influence (I wanted a bad influence). Of everybody that I'm remotely related to he is the one I am most like. Had a chance to tell him that a few days ago. I still rarely see him as he lives in Texas now, but we're connected through the car bug, but very different cars...Here's one that I never saw in person, but he had from 1972 to about 1989...

A Cheetah! How cool is that!