my first Muscle Car....sorry, not a MOPAR

[DAYTONA]

...fall, 1967, I was driving a really hot 55 Chevy and beating everything I raced, but I just never liked the old 55.. I wanted a new GTO, I wanted to be "king of the street"

...one day, I picked up a magazine at the neighborhood drug store that lit my fire...it had a pair of new 68 GTOs on the cover and I knew at that exact moment I was going to get one purchased, no matter how many jobs it took...I carried that magazine in my school notebook from September of 1967 until May of 1968, and looked at it in every class, every day....reading and re-reading the article over and over.....I looked at the cover of the magazine all the time, dreaming of owning a new 68 GTO convertible....

...in March of 1968, I had quite a bit of cash saved, sold my 55 Chevy to my dad, and we headed off to Wells Pontiac in Richmond Indiana...I got a good deal thru a friend of a friend and ordered the GTO exactly the way I wanted it....it was low on options because I was low on money, but I got it ordered in "Army Green" as we called it back then, with a 400 4-spd and it had to be a convertible...

...it took 6 long weeks for the Goat to arrive, and on the Saturday it came in, I had to work 13 hours, so my dad and a friend of his went to get the car for me...they dropped it off at work that day and all I could do was look at it all afternoon while waiting on customers at the grocery store...lots of fun, lots of stories with that 68 GTO....lots of races, lots of tickets, several arrests, lotsa girls....nothing like being 16 with a new GTO, life was great

...while moving stuff(and moving and moving) to my garage last week, I came across the magazine that started my quest for a GTO....I still have it, along with every other magazine I have ever bought, EVER..

...the original GTO was destroyed in 1969, but I searched for decades and finally found a twin about 3 years ago....bought it.....kinda like the "twilight zone" every time I look at it, or drive it....I sometimes forget it's been over 40 years, "Magic Carpet Ride" is no longer on the Billboard Top Ten list, and the young girls are now grandmothers

...the magazine, the original GTO and the replacement GTO

[JS27N0B]

Very nice. Just goes to show, hard work usually pays off in the end.

[72hemi]

That's really cool. And I'll bet that car meant more to you than it would have if someonw just handed you the keys.

[DAYTONA]

That's really cool. And I'll bet that car meant more to you than it would have if someonw just handed you the keys.

... even with my down payment, I still had a $91. per month payment and at $1.35 per hour, it kept me busy supporting the GTO and the girls ...I really enjoyed that car, loved every minute of it....traded it in 10 months later for a faster Chevelle convertible

[hooD]

Great story about your GTO.  So you worked at a grocery store too!  Thats how I saved up to buy my Cuda in '72. 

The picture below is my son's best friends GTO.  That thing is fast...it has the LS2 6.0L engine...talk about a neck snapper.

Your GTO is a beauty, I like the black convertible top. 

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your thread.

[RT Dude]

Wow cool cars.
Hey hood, that new GTO is a Holden Monaro in Aussie. Plenty of aftermarket parts for it there.
I have the new four door model at home, with the LS2 6.0L and the new 6 speed auto gearbox. The new gearbox is miles better than the old four speed auto. Power is detuned from the factory to only 260kw though.

[Aussie Challenger]

  When GM had made the decision to take our Commodore/Monaro and turn it into a Pontiac GTO they flew a few US motoring writers over to Australia to test drive OUR Monaro. They were impressed as it is a wild ride, however they also noted that GM shouldn't alter the suspension in any way from the Aussie spec's.    
  GM didn't listern, they softened the ride and raised the ride hight slightly. It took some of the fun out of the car. I have a friend in Oklahoma City who bought one and when I checked it out pointed out the differences. He said that he had checked out our Aussie Monaro on the net and thought there was a difference, unfortunately it costs tooo much to send our springs to America. He has been to a few other owners who likewise were trying to get a little bit more from their suspensions.
  I talked to the manager of a Hummer dealer who chose for his company car the Pontiac GTO, he had altered the suspension tooo, except he raised it 1 & 1/2". It really looked sad.   
  The Muscle Car era was unique and brought out a lot of powerfull and fun cars which sadly cannot be duplicated today, govt intervention &  dare I mention his name  Ralf Nader..

[bb71challenger]

Very cool story with ultra cool vintage pics to back it up. Way to go!! 

[The Cuda Guy]

Awesome story bro!  Pretty cool you found another one just like it too.  What was your first Mopar?

Don

[wally426ci]

Thats so Cool Daytona!! 

Very pretty, I tell you, one day I think Im slapping F7 back on my car.........

So, how did the first car get "destroyed?"

[DAYTONA]

Awesome story bro!  Pretty cool you found another one just like it too.  What was your first Mopar?

Don

...a 73 CUDA, 340/AT was my first MOPAR....ordered it when I got out of the USAF and returned to the USA...the car had very bad luck, it was hit numerous times, wrecked numerous times(never by me), crushed under a tree during an ice storm, vandalized, rammed head on by an ex-wife(not mine), slid thru a barbed wire fence backwards into a field, sideswiped sitting at the curb, tagged by a police car during a high speed chase(not me) and was finally drowned in a storm sewer...last time I saw the poor car, it was rusted up to the marker lights all the way around and the interior was about rotted out of it ...all this happened before 1977...lotsa long stories with that one...thats one CUDA I hope finally died, it had its own demons to deal with

[The Cuda Guy]

Man I love your stories!!!  I bet there are few more of those types huh LOL!!!  Pretty cool bro!  I love the round tail lights!  What is your favroite Muscle Car (Any Brand)?  What is your favroite Mopar? 

Don

[DAYTONA]

Thats so Cool Daytona!! 

Very pretty, I tell you, one day I think Im slapping F7 back on my car.........

So, how did the first car get "destroyed?"

...I traded the GTO in and a few days later it was sitting back in front of my house....the new owner had a relative that lived across the street from me...kinda funny I thought

...the 2nd owner fell asleep on his way to work early one morning a few months after buying the GTO....he hit a concrete bridge/railroad overpass and the GTO was torn in half....the driver suffered critical injuries from the crash and was hospitalized for months....he survived the accident, but was somewhat incapacitated afterwards

...the Chevelle SS396/375 also had a very short lifespan....I joined the military and sold the car to a local dealer...it was stolen/recovered off the lot twice before it was sold...in 1971 a buddy of mine was searching a junkyard in the next town and saw the crushed remains in a stack of cars being sent to the big furnaces in the sky, it was probably turned into a few cases of Pepsi cans...he recognized the car because I had had the Chevelle painted a Corvette color "steel cities gray" due to several accidents it had been involved in...he saw the flat, gray Chevelle and immediately knew it was the same car...no idea why it was crushed before it's 2nd birthday ....apparently it was "possessed" too

pix...the Chevelle after the color change....it had several repairs made(street racing scars), but the color change was mostly to fool the police...the black Chavelle was WELL known in town and I was looking to disguise it a little bit...the police were fooled for a while, but soon figured out it was the same car and began following me everywhere I went once again

[71340RT]

Great story and I'm glad you were able to find another one that was built so much like your first GTO.

[Rare_T_A]

Great story. My first real muscle car was a 68 Firebird I got in 70. It was the same color green as your GTO. I have a ton of memories from it also.