Ok, if you guys are really bored... read this. This is the story on my car. It is insane, I have posted it on here years ago, but figured you'd like to hear about me and this crazy car.... it's cool.
In 1988 my friends and I decided to take a drive out to this place called the Classic Car Center in Warsaw Indiana, which is about an hour and a half from us in Illinois..I was 15. This is when I first saw an AAR Cuda up close in person, and fell in love with the car. They had two of them! I realy never knew about them until that day. The strobe stripes and black hood and fenders just hit me as the coolest car I've ever seen! Ever since then I've always wanted one, and drooled over many magazine pics and internet articles on the AAR.
Now it is 2004, I'm at a local bar with some friends talking about cars. My one friend Mike asks "whats that Cuda your wanting again"?...I replied, "a 1970 AAR Cuda". Mike said "no way! Your not going to believe it but my friend is selling one out in Syracuse" I said "its probobly fake, or your wrong about the model...they are very rare cars". He called his friend on the phone, and was describing it to me, and it sure sounded like the real deal.
A week later I drove out, and there it was, a numbers matching B5 blue AAR, with 53000 miles! The only bummer was, he already sold it.
I begged him to ask the new owner if he would sell the car, since it was bought site-unseen, and the guy realy had no clue what the AAR was. He was just a guy with alot of money who buys and sells old cars as a hobby. After he saw the car, he decided to keep it...this shot down my hopes of ever finding one again that was original AND priced at an unbelievable dollar amount at that time.
One month goes by, and I get a phone call..."The guy with the Cuda wants to sell it"..."his wife and him took it for a ride and don't realy like it, she thinks its too noisy"....three days later..I bought it! (May 14th 2004)
A month went by and I was staring at the car in my garage, thinking where those old pictures could be that I took when I was a kid..after searching for a couple of hours I found them in my closet...this is when I just about fell over....the Cuda in the pictures I photographed sixteen years ago is the EXACT car I bought last week! The drivers side AAR sticker had the two corners torn off like somebody tried to steal it years ago...this is the first thing I looked at when I saw it was a B5 blue cuda in the old pics! besides the sticker, it has the same ding in the right rear quarter, the same Kelly tires, and the small air-shock nozzle is visible under the back of the car on the rear valence in the pics as well, ! There is no doubt it was the car I bought!! The car sat for so long that those Kelly tires were dry rotted, and most likely the same ones from 1988! After amazingly finding the second, and third owners of my car..he had some incredible history on it that tied my whole story together even more, and proved his friend sold the car to that car center I was at back in 87...read on...
Hi Rudy, my name is John Marshall and I am indeed a previous owner of this
car, I'm the third owner to be exact. Well sit back, ( it's a lengthy story)
and I'll tell you the story of how, and when I found this car and what I did
to it, and the what happened to it after I sold it. Here it goes........ I
found this car back in 1981 in a barn covered with hay! I went to look at a
71 roadrunner with a friend of mine that he was thinking of buying. I was an
ASE certified mechanic for a chrysler dealer at the time, so he asked if I
would go check out the roadrunner. Upon arrival in and small town (
Harrwington) about a half hour south of where I live, here in North Canaan
Connecticut, we pulled in to a farm and went to the door and an older
gentleman came out and took us to his old hay barn to look at the 71'
roadrunner, that he had advertised for sale. When he opened the door, there
sat a pretty nice 71' roadrunner. so as we were looking at it, I noticed
another car way down at the opposite end of the barn.I asked the Gentleman,
what it was. ( It was so dirty and covered with hay I could'nt even tell )
He said it was another old plymouth that his son had, and was probably going
to sell it as soon as he sold the roadrunner.( The roadrunner was his son's
car as well) It seems his son did not live in the area and asked his father
to sell the old plymouths for him as he lost interest in them. I think he
might have been in the marines or somthing. Anyway, I walked down to the
other end of the barn and wiped off about 6 inches of hay and filth and
there sat the AAR cuda! Well I ended up buying the cuda, and my buddy bought
the roadrunner and that's how I became it's 3rd owner. Ok lets jump ahead
about a year or two. I had this AAR in my garage, just sitting and it needed
a restoration, but I already had a superbird that I was in the process of
restoring ( I still have the superbird and a lil red express) and I just did
not have the funds to start the restoration until I finished the superbird,
so the AAR sat until 1983, when I managed to scrape up enough funds to start
on the AAR. I pulled the engine and transmission and all the trim, including
the original torn seats and sent the body to a local body shop. In the mean
time I had the seats repaired with dark blue cloth centers, and I'm guessing
there still in it? Anyway while removing the back seat from the car I found
a colt 45 pistol ! , and the perfect original build sheet, which I had
safely tucked away in my fileing cabinet. I rebuilt the engine and when the
car returned home from the body shop, I reinstalled it and detailed
everything. This car was all original under the hood including the correct
exhaust manifolds. I belive it was a non-matching numbers block though. I
installed new chrome bumpers, trim rings, hood pins, etc. etc. and, all new
exhaust. Remember back in the early eightys, there was not a lot of
reproduction parts available like there is now. So I scouted swap meets to
find everything else I needed. Anyway in the spring of 1983 I took it to my
first mopar show " The Newengland Mopar Expo" and I won first place in E
body plymouth class. I still have a picture of the car with the trophey! In
1984 I sold the car, (and forgot all about the build sheet in my file
cabinet.) BIG MISTAKE! and I'v regreted it ever since! I sold it to a guy in
New Brittan Connecticut. actually a young kid.( His name was Rich somthing)
another big mistake! he had it for a couple of years and blew the engine
street racing it. I understand that he had it rebuilt and added the headers.
Somewhere in the mid eightys that kid ( Rich) sold the car to someone in
Torrington Ct. Then somwhere around 1989 a close friend of mine came to my
house one night with is roll back flatbed, and low and behold, there sat the
AAR on the back! He had found the car in Torrington Connecticut and bought
it, just to bring to spring Carlisle PA. to make a fast buck. I stood there
in amazement at the condition of my beautiful AAR. I opened the hood and saw
the headers, and then I saw the dents, and a busted rear spoiler, and some
white lettered Kelly tires on it, and I think I remember seeing some big
ugly speakers bolted to the rear package shelf, and the paint was blistering
on the rear quater ! I was just sick! Anyway My buddy offered me the car for
12 grand. I wanted the car so bad, but I had just got married and could'nt
afford to buy it back, so my buddy took it to Carlisle and sold it as he was
driving in the place! When he returned, he told me he sold it to a place in
Indina, called the "classic car center". About a month after that I was
looking through a car trader paper and there it was, for sale in an add from
that very place. Anyway for years, I'v been hopeing to find the current
owner ( which I just did so thanks for emailing me) in hopes of getting the
car back ( Ya I know .......fat chance right?). It just seems this car keeps
comming back to haunt me LOL! Anyway thats the story in a nutshell. Last
summer I had my superbird at a local cruise night and I'm sitting there, and
this gentleman in his early fiftys comes up to me and is looking at my car
and starts to visit, and says he used to own a AAR cuda, and I replied me
too! He said mine was blue and I said ..mine too! After telling me his name
and where he was from, I remembered his name on some paper work I got with
the car. Guess what...he was the original owner of my AAR and bought the AAR
new from "Jack Savelle Chrysler
Plymouth" in Thomaston CT. it was called just "Thomaston Chrysler Plymouth"
in later years. ". His name is Brian
Winters. I Thought you'd like to know that.
In these photo's, you'll see the air shock nozzle under the rear valance, the Kelly tires, the dent over the right rear tire, and the corners of the AAR flag torn off.. I shot these in 87 on that car lot, then the new ones in 2004. My dad even commented on how funny it was I shot the exact same angle of the car then and now... pretty wild.. I remember walking around the car back then, and looking inside of it... I wish I took about a hundred other pics of it that day. After hooking up with the other owners, I located TWO build sheets for the car!
