Hi guys,
I recently received an Email from John containing his story of how he became a 429-a-phile,this has prompted me to tell my story .
The year was 1980 and everyone had long hair except accountants & politicians,they didn't have any......Sorry this is starting to sound like a bad P I movie.
I remember going to an American car sales with my father,he was about to turn my world upside down. Shortly after he came home with a metallic bronze Dodge coronet 1972 vintage & I was hooked . The following year he traded for a 78 Caprice ,that car was the smoothest I had ever been in ,in contrast British cars were harsh and crude.(Jag,Rover,Rolls,Daimler&Jensen excluded as they had either large or American engines). I saw lots of American muscle thundering about in those days & I befriended a young guy around the corner who had a string of great cars from a Plymouth Duster to a shark front Mustang.Then disaster struck ,an accident wrote off the Caprice & due to very heavy insurance premiums around £200 per year(x2 for $) in that year ,my father was put off of buying another yank & he settled for a ? (it was so boring I can't even remember what it was.
I was devastated, at the grand old age of 16 life just didn't seem worth living ,but then there was a vision coming down my street a 1971 Mach1 metallic green with argent stripes I was in love .I saw that car and many others cruising around that year ,but it would be a very long time before I would own a Mach1.
In June 1994 I went to an American car show in my home town,though it was small there were quite a lot of cars for sale & classic insurance was mentioned to me for the first time ,now I was on a mission to buy my all time favourite .I rushed in & bought the second Mach1 I saw ,it was a nice car but had suffered in the English weather for many years ,but it was mine & I was very happy with it .Until I visited a friend of mine who had just acquired the car I now own ? a 429 SCJ.I had to have it and a deal was eventually struck .Not the cheapest pile of spare parts money could buy of course but I was the happiest man in the world.That was last summer and I am still smiling .Which leads me on to the present day ,happy & poor but not car-less.
Thanks for reading
Nigel
Posted on Mar 10, 1999, 5:32 PM from IP address 212.56.108.10