Luke Preece, Green Member
'70 Dodge Dart
"I bought this thing when I was 16--I'm 22 now--from a friend of the family at a Moto Guzzi shop. It was a Grandma Green Slant Six/auto on the column car with rubber floor mats. The first thing I did was peel the rest of the vinyl roof off and primer it. It was all glue and shredded green stuff. I have horrible pictures of the car when I first bought it. That was ugly too, so I primered the rest of the body to make it match. The next step was to put some 14-inch Cragar SS rims on it that I scored from a garage sale for 100 bucks. Then, without my parents' permission, I drove to San Diego for an AC/DC concert, but I got busted when the six blew up all over everything. It was insane, this was at 2 a.m. and it was just sitting there smoking. I really beat on this car." Luke built a 360 after the six went away, but it grenaded after 100 miles. Now the car has a 380hp Mopar crate engine. He's on his third TorqueFlite 727, and he swapped the rear for an 8 3/4 with a 3.23:1 Sure-Grip when the 7 1/4 clunked.
"When the six blew up I pulled over and thedipstick was gone."
Luke Preece
Doug Baird, Member Who Is Completely Gonzo Over His Fury
'70 Plymouth Sport Fury GT
"I looked for 8 years to find a Fury. Well, it was more like 25 years because that's how long ago my original car got wrecked and went to the junkyard. One day I was on moparts.com and there was a guy selling a Fury GT for a widow in upstate New York. They wanted a lot for it. It was more than I wanted to pay until I saw that it was exactly like the car I had in high school, so I had to have it. I drove to New York from California and towed it home. People always say that they had one of these cars, but that's impossible. There were only a few made like this one."
Jim Bellissimo, Member That Has Help
'70 Dodge Coronet Convertible R/T Clone
"I bought this car in 1999 because I needed a new work car and I wanted to drive something that was old and wasn't a truck. Then I found this guy in New Jersey who had a burnt-orange Coronet 500 convertible, so I bought it for $15,000, shipped it to California, and had it appraised for a lot more. It had a 440 in it and the numbers didn't match, but I didn't care--numbers don't mean anything to me. Besides, I was going to drive it. Eventually it blew a head gasket and that repair snowballed into what you see here. I'd never done anything like this before. Sure I worked on cars but nothing like this. Club members came over and helped me put the engine back in so this was a group project."
"My uncles were car nuts and my parents were not, so I hung out with my uncles."
Jim Bellissimo
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