I kept looking at the ad and
wishing things were different. Finally, my car dealer friend found a car for me.
A '96 Dodge Stratus in fantastic shape, low mileage for a mere 7200 bucks. The
final straw. I couldn't bring myself to spend that much money on a car for pure
utility and no excitement. I called on the GTX ad and made arrangements to go see
it the following day.
A trip to the bank to drain my account of the GTX's asking price, and a call to a
friend to accompany me on the trip (in case I needed a second driver). When we
arrived at the sellers home, there were a few minutes spent looking at and talking
about my old Scamp and the reason I was looking for a second vehicle. The garage
door opened, and there it was.
The Vitamin-C orange paint glowed. The 440 badge called out to me. The car was in
pristine condition. A few minutes spent checking fender tag numbers, and casting
numbers revealed that this was a numbers matching original car with all of it's
original goodies. The few exceptions were the original Carter carb had been
replaced with a Holley, the exhaust manifolds had been replace with headers
(original manifolds in the trunk) and the original 3.23:1 gear set had been swapped
with another set of the same ratio (original gears in the trunk). Upon closer
inspection, the body and (original) paint were showing signs of age. Small dings
in the body, numerous small chips in the paint. Not bad for 31 years.
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"The Vitamin-C orange paint glowed. The 440 badge called out to me. "
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