Welcome to the board! I believe that I can say I'm the closest member to you as I'm just across the boundary waters in Florence Co, WI.
I work in IM @ CCI Systems on the north side.
Double coincidence:
1) I was a fiber-optics systems engineer at CCI Systems when it was still Cable Constructors, 1999-02. You probably know my sister-in-law, who's worked there in HR or Safety or wherever she is now for over 10 years.
2) I worked at Kurtz Diesel up until a couple of months ago, so I was in Florence every day for almost two years. I work at the CarQuest in Iron Mountain now.
We've probably met. I almost bought a '72 Challenger Rallye in Florence about 25 years ago. I can't remember who had it at the time, but it was owned by a guy named Jim Brackett when I was in high school. Fred Noeske and Trevor Dollar both later owned it; it was a 340 car originally but was swapped to a 383 in the '70s. Candy-apple red over gold with an original T/A hood & spoiler added, and the 340 SIX PAK decals on the fenders. Ring any bells? The original owner (Dennis White) has the car now; I sold him the decklid off my car last year along with the repro T/A spoiler that had been on my car.
Welcome to the site and as a fellow 74 Challenger owner, just let me say how jealous I am of the condition of your car! The roof is one of the very few panels I didn't have to change on mine and it's a triple black car. The roof is going back on- only THIS time, there'll be some paint under it!
I got really lucky in buying mine. A friend on another forum had it for many years and had sold it, but somehow ended up getting the car back after over a year. The new owner had started redoing the car and run out of money, so by that time it was a rolling shell. After getting it back, he decided it was more than he wanted to tackle and "not really what [he was] into" so he gave me a hell of a deal. It's a lifelong southern Alabama car, so other than the problems caused by the vinyl roof it's astoundingly solid. It's got a couple of problems, but seriously I didn't think shells this good still existed in project form. I thought they were all snapped up long ago. Original floors and trunk pans that don't need replacing? In 2014?! For $3,500?! Sign me up! I also met a couple of the previous owners, dating back to the early '80s. The topper? Among the trailer-load of stuff I got with it, the car came with a newly-redone dash pad, still in the wrapper!
Still, even though the roof looked good in the quarter-seam areas, there was a little damage in that area that had been previously repaired. After removing the original roof, I found significant damage to the roof structure in that area. I fixed it, and fixed it right, but it was pretty heartbreaking on such an otherwise-solid car. Vinyl top? Never again. The whole process was a ton of work, especially for someone that's never done sheetmetal work previously, but persistence and diligence paid off. I know it's right. It has to be--I dreamed about this car for over 25 years!
I've talked to a few '74 owners since getting mine, and I've seen a bit of a trend among them: weird options. Almost as if Chrysler said, "End of the line, boys... start throwin' stuff at 'em to use up what we've got!" Mine's a 318 auto car with manual steering and manual disc brakes, but it's an AM/8-track car w/AC, light group, console shift, and Tuff wheel (per previous owners, the data tag is gone). Is yours an oddball combo too?