In The Beginning
 

My first car. For a long time now I said I was going to do a story on my past with Muscle Cars. Even though I have been retire for 16 years it just seemed like I could never get it done. Within the last 2 years I have also been not thinking straight and my memory is slowly draining away. I went for some tests and they tell me I have Dimensia. So I guess it's now or never.

I posted this a while back but I just wanted to start from the beginning for anyone who missed it. It all started for me at Belmont Chev Olds in 1969. I was a teenager fresh out of high school and my father promised me $400 for a downer on a car if I passed grade 12. I lived within walking distance of Gorries Golden Mile Chev, but everyone knew that if you wanted a fast Chev then Belmont was the place to go and Dave Mackay was guy to talk to. Dave was a great salesman and he knew his sh*t. He was the kind of guy that could read the back of a Corn Flakes box and you would think it was the word of God. He showed me a couple of cars and then something out front caught my eye. It was a 69 Camaro SS350 in silver with black interior and black SS stripes along the side. The front Endura Bumper was silver not chrome, to match the body. It had a 350/300 SBC 4 Spd with 4:10 gears. The SS wheels with the white letter tires really finished it off. OMG. It was friggin beautiful. Don't forget I was a green teenager who got excited just to drive the Old Man's 425 Olds. Dave took me for a ride behind the dealer. The car was dead stock so just cruising around was nice and smooth with the quiet exhaust. After all it was practically a new car. We started back to the dealer and pulled on to the street behind the dealer. Dave geared down and let her go. Damn. It was fast for me.
It ran 14.40. Dave powered the gears like a pro. I was sold. He gave me a great deal and I couldn't get to the bank fast enough.
It seemed like an eternity before me and my dad went to pick it up. I remember I was shaking all the way there. We finalized the deal and I went to get in the car. My dad stopped me and said "I'll drive it home". When I first went to look for a car my dad said "and I don't want to see any Hot Rod or a fast car". I couldn't believe he didn't realize it was fast when he saw it. We drove to the highway and when we got on the on ramp my dad nailed it. The car put down 2 nice black stripes on the pavement and actually got a little out of shape. Oh sh"t. It's all over now. I was so close. I almost had it. I figured he was going to get off on the next exit and take it back to the dealer. Surprisingly he didn't and we made it home. He got out of the car walked over to me and yelled "I told you nothing fast!" He kicked me in the ass so hard it lifted me right off the ground. ;)

Sorry for the poor pics. It only took me 5 days to get this done. ;)

That is a beautiful car and a great moment for father and son! You were a fortunate teen.
Hang in there.

Awesome story!

I bet you the boot in your backside when you got home was your Dad's version of a congratulatory handshake.

Those photos are wonderful.

(I rotated your picture for you.)

Love the story and thank you for sharing. Father and son stories get me every time..

Thanks for sharing your story. Very cool.

That was a great story Ziggy, can't wait to hear more! Love the pics too.

That looks like Pharmacy Ave or Victoria Pk in the background???

great story and pics. thank you. i pray for the best for you and your family

Awesome story!

Early car too, short spoiler.

All the best man, all the best.
Anthony

- my car was delivered at Gorries.

Thanks for sharing Ziggy!Hang in there bud.Bill,in Ottawa.

Great story! Thanks for sharing.

Well that was my morning "pick me up story" for the day Ziggy. What a great piece of history and thanks for sharing that.

I think your Dad was pretty good s.....t.

I would love to hear a few more stories of some of your other cars if you don't mind, as I am sure you have many.

Paul

Wow, great read!

Rich

Close. Warden and Rossford. Near Ellesmere.

Big Thanks to all. More to come.

The Zig
 

Great story my friend !

Cool story and beautiful car

Great story!! I noticed in the pic that the front fender stripe is solid and the 350 emblems are gone. Did you remove those?

Great story. I thought Gorries was a performance dealership, no?

I don't know. I can't remember. lol

I think I had a minor fender bender and told the paint shop to fill them in.

Great story!

I would have gladly taken a kick in the butt if my Dad would have helped me get my first Camaro!

Thank you for a great story about your Camaro, and prayers for your health.

So later that day my dad went to see a movie. I went to pick up one of my buddies to go for a cruise. We came up behind a 67 Firebird 326 HO. Of course when I pulled up beside this guy it turned out to be 2 of my buddies. They asked me where I stole the car from. We all went for a cruise and had a couple of runs from a roll. I figured since I didn't know what a 326 Pontiac was that it would be NP. It was surprisingly quick and it was a toss up on who got ahead. After all the jokes and corny excuses we decided to go outside the city to make a full pass. We went to Altona road which was a famous Toronto street racing spot. I still remember how dead silent it was at night.

So as I drove home that night I looked in the rear view mirror and a cop car with it's lights on was behind me. Oh. I guess he just wants to make sure that I get home safelyEmoji. He finally hit the siren to pull me over right in front of my house. It's a 70 degree August night and half the neighborhood is on the porch relaxing. Of course most of them got up to call the rest of the family to come and see Kenny's new car before the police tow it awayEmoji.

So here we go. License ownership and insurance. Is there a problem officer? You know what the problem is. When you left that last intersection you left 40' of rubber and squawked the tires in every gear. Oh. I'm sorry. I just bought this car and I'm not very good with a 4 spd. Silence. He gave me that "Give Me A Break" look and went back to his car. I need to get the car off the road before the old man comes home. 10 minutes later he gives me a ticket for unnecessary noise and says. You are lucky I didn't get a reading on you. You'd be on a hook right now heading for the the pound. Thank you officerEmoji.

I go to start the car and nothing. Oh come on! Is anything else going to happen tonight! We screw around with it for about 10 minutes and guess who comes home?

Hi Dad. What the hell are you doing? It won't start. He jumps in the car and it starts right up. No one told me you have to push the clutch in to start the car. Doh.

2 years later I sold it to a Chevy dealer. They called back 2 days later and said the rear end was cracked and there was no spare or jack. I said. Well. The car is still under warrantee. ;)


So after I sold the SS I went looking for a new ride When I was in high school I would always see this guy in a black 68 Nova waiting to pick up his girl friend. It was a black on black bench with a 4SPD. It had tinted glass, dog dish hub caps and the optional chrome package. But no SS option. It had a serious idle and I thought it had a built motor. Turns out the car was dead stock except he had pulled off the resonators added dumps and a Hurst shifter. Compared to the Camaro it sounded amazing! I asked the owner if it was for sale? He said he had just setup a For Sale Ad for the weekend. ALL RIGHT!!! I bought the car for $1800. Some of my buddies said I paid too much until they went for a ride! I would wait for for a passenger to start talking and then hit it. If they kept talking I guess they weren't impressed. Most people didn't keep talking in this car. They usually pushed back into the seat and said HOLLY ****. I'd power second & third and that really woke them up. Don't forget it was early 70s and a lot of guys had never been in something fast. Most of them thought that there Dad's 283 Impala was a rocket. "Ya man.It spins THE TIRE in the rain."EmojiEmoji

That's some stance on that Nova! Great stories, keep 'em comin'.

Did it have the L79 327 by any chance??

Great stories. Thanks for sharing and keep them coming! :-)

The First Nova.
 

Yes. It was an original L79. I can't believe I left that out.

It had a cast iron intake with a Quadrajet. I am surprised on how quick it was. I can't remember for sure what gear it had. I'm thinking a 3:55 or 3:73 with a Muncie wide trans.
I do remember that it had no problems on the highway. Well at least till I started screwing with it ;). When I took it to the spring shop the guy asked me how high I wanted the car to sit. Now don't forget I was a squirrely young kid just starting out. I told him as high as possible. I wanted to put a big tire on it and I knew the Novas couldn't take much of a tire with the stock wheel well. 2 days later I go to pick the car up. Not high enough. Spring guy says they can't make it any higher with stock springs. OK. New springs. 1 day later he calls me. The car is too high! I can't get the driveshaft back in! Awww. Sounds perfect to me. Turns out a driveshaft from a 55 Chevy goes right in. Every abandoned 55, 56, and 57 Chevy lost a driveshaft that summer. Next I pull the stock motor and off to the machine shop. Cam, headers and some head work with an intake & carb. 4:56 gears were next. Right at that time the car was no longer fun to drive. I had a box of universals and caps in the trunk. The car would drop a universal or the driveshaft every time if I powered a gear. I got pretty good at changing universals on the shoulder. Easy install as I didn't need a jack! lol. We never figured out the problem and I sold the car. Obviously the pinion angle was off a mile after the new springs.

Man those are some wicked skinny but tall bias ply skins on the rear.

Paul

That brings back memories! I went to trade school at
Centennial college on Warden near Eglinton in 74/75/76. Wish I would have looked around Golden Mile / Gorries/Belmont back then. Thanks and lets hear some more!

Small world Ron. I had the Nova there one year. They had some kind of deal were they would work on your car for nothing to help train the students. Of course the line up to get in was very long, sometimes 2 years or more and it could take almost as long to get the work done.

I don't know if you knew that the Petro Can at Pharmacy & Eglinton had one of the first Chassis Dynos in the GTA. That was very high tech stuff back then. I took my L78 Nova there. We never got a good reading as the car would start spinning the tires at full throttle. They put 3 guys in the back seat and 5 sitting on the rear bumper. I can't remember what happened after that. :(

Did you notice the rear white wheels? That and white headers were big at that time.

For sure. A lot of fast street and drag cars came out of Gorries.

Yes I did notice the white wheels, cool. I will be looking for some more stories hopefully soon.

Regarding the Gorries Chev Olds dealership, this was the dealership that was building the 1967 Camaro Black Panthers in either a factory 327/210 HP or the crazy 427/425 HP dealer conversion Camaros.

Check out the articles from Mecum and Hagerty regarding these 67 Camaro conversions. Lance Hill from this site is also referenced as a big influencer in the muscle car/NHRA world.

https://monthly.mecum.com/2019/11/01/on-the-prowl/

https://www.hagerty.com/media/opinio...pecial-camaro/

Paul

Thanks for sharing!

The days of a '69 SS 350 Camaro with an Endura front bumper just being another used car on the front of a dealer, I wish I was around for that.

Great stories Ken !
I met Matt Avery at the Solid Lifter Showroom in 2019. He was writing that article on the Black Panthers and I put him in touch with a friend of mine Bernie Coffey who was a mechanic at the original Gorries in 67. Bernie was able to share with him some of the stories of the dealership back in the day. Bernie recalls that the dealership had a multilevel parking garage and that many mechanics would stay very late on a Friday night as customers came in for a super tune before street racing. he says he can still recall the sound of the cars in the parking garage with open headers on a Friday night.

The Chevelle
 

So I sold the Nova and went looking for a new ride. I found a 64 Chevelle. It was a little rough but it had some good parts. It had a Vette 327, a Muncie and 1 good tire. 2 weeks after I bought it some old woman rear ended me. She really nailed me too. She buckled the trunk so bad that it stuck up about 10" from the top of the rear quarter and the bumper was just as bad. I settled with the insurance company for cash and tied the trunk down with a rope. Perfect! I knew the car was missing something ;).I bought a new Holley with the money :).

After I got home with the car I did a full tune up. Plugs, wires, cap, points filters and oil. Set the lifters and points and changed some leaking header gaskets. It had duel points so I guess it was a Vette motor. I took it out on the highway to clean it out. I made a full pass and everything seemed to be ok. I ran most of my buddies and I only beat one.

The car had no posi and no bottom end power. It needed a gear real bad. So me and 2 friends went down to the lakeshore were all the wreckers were. The first 2 had nothing but one of them made a call and sent me down the street. So I walk into the office and ask the guy if the donor car is off the ground. He chuckles and says. Ya. It's off the ground all right. He takes me to the back were the cars are all stacked on each other. He says there it is. He points to a 65 Chevelle that is about 40' off the ground. Let me know when you get it out and walks away. Great. He turns around and comes back and says. Be careful! I finally realized he was kidding and we all laughed. How are we going to get that one down. The owner says don't worry. Give me $120 and we will pull it out.

12 bolt. Only 64-65 Chevelle's with a 327/300HP would get one from the factory. So I give him the money and he says wait here. So 5 minutes later this kid shows up driving a stripped down tow truck. He says give me 5 minutes and when I yell here it comes you catch it ;).lol. He throws the torches over his shoulder and starts climbing these cars. He gets up there no problem. He starts cutting the control arms. The rear still had tires on it. I said to the owner. I hope he doesn't bend an axle when it falls. He says, Don't worry. So now the rear end is hanging by one parking break cable. So this kid is as strong as a bull. He lifts up one end of rear to level it out and cuts the other end brake cable. The rear falls and lands square to the ground and it must have bounced about 10'. So the owner says if there is anything wrong bring it back. As we are loading it up I see the posi tag. Right on.

So I take the rear right to Rick Eaton at Gorries. I gave him a 4:88 gear set and picked the rear up 3 days later. He had to use a spacer plate which made me nervous. He reassured me and said take it out and let her rip. How did he know how I break my rear ends in? ;).

Only 2 buddies knew I put a gear in the car. So as a regular part of our day we were all going some where so we were bound to run each. First up was Steve who had a 396 in a 55 Chevy. It ran OK but was never built to be king of the block. Today he was driving his 383 70 Challenger. Steve's car and mine made for a great race. Both were 4 spds, both were loud and both were driven by a Lunatic. lol. So Steve yells out are you ready? I said. You go first, I have to check the air in my tires! lol. One two three go. I let Steve get the jump on me just to be sure I was quicker. I hit it. Bang! Bang! Bang! it was over by third gear. I look over at my passenger Davey. He can hardly talk. What the frig did you do to this thing? I said I put a gear in it ;). Geez. I thought you had swapped the motor. I have never seen a car pickup that much with just a gear. Ya. I was shifting at 4000 too;).lol. Over the next couple of weeks I ran almost every one I knew. I got most of them except one. The 55.

Wayne was the mechanic in the group. Just for any Toronto guys out there, he worked in the Gulf station at Warden and 401. If we weren't at Harveys we were at the Gulf station. If the phone rang at 2:00 AM in the station there was a street race some where. I remember these 3 hippies' in a Green 63 Bel Air 4 door with 3 on the tree with a 327/300 SBC. STOCK!!! It was one of those fluke cars that was a lot faster then it should have been. All 3 of them would jump in this 63, pool there money for gas and go hunting for a Road Runner. They won more then they lost.

Wayne drove a real Balls To
the Wall hot rod. It was a flat black 55 Chevy 327 4Spd with 4:56 gears with a one piece fiberglass front end and trunk lid. Nothing on the floor but paint and no back seat. If you have ever been in a 55 Chevy with a screaming SBC and fender well headers you will understand that there is no sweeter sound then a SBC at 7000RPM in a 55. I don't know what it is that makes it sound so incredible. Maybe the large area behind the steel dash, the bare floor or those fender well headers with the Corvair mufflers. And Wayne could shift like the wind. I don't remember why but that car had a Muncie shifter. They were one of the worst shifters ever. Hard enough to shift normally let alone power shift.
Knowing Wayne he probably did some trick work to get it to shift like that. The car ran low 12s and was tough to beat on the street. It had quite the rep. Strangers would drop by the station late at night. The 401 was just 1/2 mile away so there was always a place to run. Back then the 401 actually thinned out late at night. Now I know this will sound like BS but a friend of ours, Eric,had a 64 Vette. I had a pic of that car towing the 55 on a trailer to the track. I kid you not. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I never would have believed it!

OK. Back to the Chevelle. So the car is making good power now. Lets see how it hooks. I had these antique recapped slicks. They looked like the old slicks you see back in the 50s on rails. Some guys call them Cookie Cutter slicks because of the design of the sidewall. Just like the tires on Herman Musters rail! They were hilarious. They were 29" tall and 9" wide. They had a sidewall that started about half way up on a truck tire side wall and went straight up to the edge of the tire. They were on stock steel wheels and weighed a ton. There was so much rubber on the sidewalls that when they went flat the sidewall still supported the car and would not let the wheel to get closer to the pavement then say 4". The first ever run flats!!! lol. They did not wrinkle. They must have been over 15 years old. They worked OK if you did a 20 minute burn out. lol. They worked OK but they really killed the gear. M&H had just come out with a new tire. It was 25" X 10". PERFECT. I'll have lots of gear with these. I had put 90/10 shocks in the front and 50/50s in the back. That was it. Other then new HD universals the car had stock suspension. So I put the new slicks on stock GM 15x7 black station wagon steel wheels.

So I go and pick my cousin up and off to Sheppard & Meadowvale. There was no Zoo back in the early 70s so it wasn't very busy. I let the tires down to 14#s and pulled out onto the rubber marks from other guys racing. Have you ever tried to do a burnout with a 4SPD, no line loc, no water and new sticky tires? You have to be a contortionist. You can't slowly build up the RPMs the way you do with an automatic. So I bring the Rs up to 3000 with my right foot on the gas and the brake at the same time. My left foot is pushing the clutch all the way down. I side step the clutch and give it more gas and bang! The car stalls. Shit. I tried this way about 4 times and always stalled. So now I'm pissed. I nail the gas and drop the clutch at 6000RPM.OK. That works. The tires are smoking and I ease the car out slowly releasing the gas. The car slides out and almost stalls but I keep it going. I bring the Rs up to 5500 and drop the clutch. Wham! The car digs in and hooks. Geez. It felt like the rear broke. I back the car up to see if there are any parts on the ground. Nope .OK Here we go. Back into first. I move my butt around in the seat to get comfortable. I lean forward and get a good grip on the shifter. I bring the revs up to 4500 and as I side step the clutch I nail the gas. Now. If you have never dropped the clutch with slicks that hook you may not understand this. The car charges out of the hole for about a car length and slightly bogs but it is still pulling. I take a quick look at the tack and it's sweeping past 7000 and the car is farting & popping as the valves are floating. SHIFT!!! I pull second gear. Bang! Nailed it. The tach shows 6500 and climbing fast. Bang! I get it just before it floats the valves again. Now the revs are slowing down and I pull third & fourth and let off. I pull over to the shoulder hugging the steering wheel and looking straight ahead like I am in some kind of trance. I look over at Dave. He's gone! All I see are 2 legs sticking straight up. He's laying on the back floor with the seat underneath him. Dave! Are you OK. Holly frig! That was incredible! Throw me a rope! lol

So now people are starting talk about that POS Chevelle with the bent trunk lid. lol. Guys are coming out of nowhere and after they check the car out they want to race. They just can't believe that a car looks this bad and is quick. I even ran a couple of guys more then once. They say I had a couple of beers the other night and I wasn't ready. One of my friends yells out. Ya. You weren't ready to loose. Right. lol.

I didn't win every time. I lost a couple of times. But I won a lot more then I lost. And no one ever beat me off the line.

Sorry. This is one car I don't have a pic of. :(

'

W:eek2:W stuff Zig, thanks for sharing also please don't stop!:headbang:
:beers:
~ Pete

.

Ziggy stop everything you are doing.

You need to write a damn book about this stuff. I love your style of writing, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

I hate to say it......I WANT MORE STORIES!!!!!!!!!

Paul

Your writing style reminds me of how Joe Oldham wrote and Tony Defeo wrote during his Cars Illustrated days.
Great stuff!