It's HEMI time !!! Compliments of NJSteve

[njsteve]

I had the Charger out last weekend. I went to this local hamburger joint that I hadn't visited in about 4 years. The last time I went there I ran into a high school buddy of the original owner of the car who regaled me with the story of how the kid lost control of the car in the high school parking lot and crashed into his algebra teacher's car. This was due to a temporary loss of concentration while he was trying to make out with his girlfriend, while driving.

Well anyway, I park the car and a guy walks up and it turns out he remembered the car from high school, as he was a year ahead of the original owner. In fact, he raced the car and beat it with his tunnel-rammed 327 Chevelle on I-287 in Jersey! He commented that the kid just could not drive the car.

You know, it's kinda fun living in the same area that the car is from: a new story every time you take it out for a spin.

[mockingbird812]

Most excellent!

[njsteve]

And here's a photo (courtesy of 67L78conv) from the June 2006 FAST event at Englishtown. Had a little fun running a 13.80 @ 105 mph. Nothing like cleaning the plugs out once in a while! I also had the opportunity to use their scales at the track: 4300 lbs. It's a heavy car (or I'm a real heavy driver)

[sixbrl440]

Enquiring minds want to know...did you beat that big bad GS 'vert?

[njsteve]

Yes. As you can see from the photo I cut a semi-good reaction time as the green light is still illuminated in the photo and I'm already 1-1/2 car lengths in front of the Buick. I ran a 13.80 to his losing 13.40 (I was on street tires and he was on DOT slicks)

[njsteve]

I brought the charger to Chryslers at Carlisle on Saturday. It seems like more of the "Christine/Twilight Zone" story but every time I go to a show and pop open the trunk, who should appear but the father and son team of Larry and John Ehnat. Larry was the mechanic who worked on this car when it was first delivered. He regaled us with a story how the original owner just could not drive the car and how it came back to the dealership seven days after being sold, to have the clutch replaced under warranty. His son worked at the dealership 20 years later and was the one who, in a twist of fate, found the original sales file folder for the car sitting on top of the files in the dumpster waiting to be hauled away. Some of the docs he found are shown framed, next to the car. People were joking at the show that we had documentation longer than the car -about 18 feet of it to be exact, this is just a portion.

Great people, a couple of true saints.

[njsteve]

I saw my old orange 1971 hemicharger sunroof car I sold back in 1994. Still looks good. It was kinda funny, the current owner Tim W was giving me grief that even after all these years everyone who walked by would stop and say: "Hey isn't that Steve's old car?"

[njsteve]

Here's the photo of the Ehnats next to the Charger. I just can't say enough nice things about them. It really is bizarre how they magically appear like a jeanie from a bottle every time I go to a show within a 150 mile radius of New Jersey. Maybe they're the the car's guardian angels? At least they show up on film... I was worried there for a while when the first posting of the photo disapeared.