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If that's not the coolest thing I've seen on eBay in a long time under Dodge p'ups!!! Btw, there's a DUDE on there right now with a $2500 BIN, seems pretty reasonable for what looks like a pretty nice original survivor!


Back to the Hemi Powered chop top. Brings back memories, and those early Chrysler Hemis are GROUND POUNDERS!!! I rode in one similar rig, absolutely INTOXICATING!!! The power, speed, the NOISE!!! Made for an experience not to be forgotten.


Another time, in another time... I had an experience never to be forgotten around an early chop top rod, this time with a 392 Hemi....


Once upon a time, in the late 70's... I was hanging out on a Friday night, back when people "cruised" on the weekends... (mostly illegal now, and those little Hondas aren't all that interesting). There was a famous corner in Spokane WA, Howard and Riverside. It started at dusk, both Friday and Saturday nights, and went on til past 2 in the morning, when it would finally break up and people ended up at drag races on deserted roads or at parties...


There was a BIG parking lot, just down the street from Howard and Riverside, on Riverside. Big square, on a slant, ringed by a tall building on the east side and streets on the other three sides. The parking lot was usually PACKED by the time the night got going good, muscle cars of all kinds parked every which way, throngs of people, some drinking, the cops didn't come around much...


This pretty cool guy would show up once in a while, he wasn't a regular like a lot of other people. He was a bit older than the rest of us, early thirties maybe, and his truck was a total throwback from the 50's! It was a '32 Ford Chop Top, no fiberglass, all steel... and looked a lot like this truck in the eBay listing. It was primer black, and looked as menacing as could be at night... The ground literally shook when he fired that thing up and let people listen to the engine, and I bonded with him pretty quick, cause of the Hemi. Us Mopar guys have to stick together, I was in one of my first cars at the time, a fairly beat '68 GTX, 440/4sp. I use to go through a set of back tires every few days in that car, it had a "linelock" and would do some pretty amazing burnouts, but that's another topic altogether...


One night, the guy with the Chop top was parked not far from the east exit of the parking lot, the night was getting late... the crowd was getting kinda ugly and a fight broke out, right near the '32 Ford chop top. Couple guys beating on a defenseless guy who was down, no one doing anything but standing... watching. All happened pretty fast! Well, our hero jumped in and came to the guy's defense, it was dark and hard to see what happened, but all the sudden he was stabbed, in the stomach right above his belt and he was bleeding.


The next thing happened in just a few seconds. The fight stopped, things got quiet and all eyes were on him. One hand holding his stomach, blood pouring out... he got into his truck and fired it up. I'd never heard it sound like that! I'd have to mention here that this was a pretty cool guy who you never saw showing off or getting on it, and I'd never heard the engine above much off an idle, with a big lumpy cam singing a song and the exhaust making the most incredible sounds of high compression hemi cylinders firing mixed with the clatter of solid lifters...


He slammed the door shut (to this day I don't know how a bunch of people didn't get run over or hit), at the same time nailed it and the truck instantly spun three donuts on itself with the engine tach-ing out at like six grand plus! Miraculously, the truck was pointed towards the exit when it finally stopped spinning, he stopped for a second, face as white as a ghost, and seamlessly shot out of the parking lot onto the street - both back tires smoking like a top fuel dragster - and he disappeared out of sight. I can only imagine that he went straight to one of the hospitals just up from downtown.


I never saw him again.



Now that my goose bumps have gone down, here’s another Hemi story from another time, and how it relates to this present time, Chrysler and America in this present time.



I worked out of a mobile work truck, back when I was with Ryder truck in the early 90's, went to all kinds of places, fixed all kinds of trucks, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the middle of a field in 100 + degree temperatures. My favorite is changing a Delco 50MT starter in a Kenworth in the middle of winter, zero degrees out and using a toboggan as a creeper in the snow…


A nice spring day, I was working up on Division St, easy day… just servicing a few trucks and fixing lights, the usual stuff. I hear this sound from a distance, the most eerie, unusually toneful exhaust note. It got louder and then incredibly intense as this Green Metallic ’69 GTX Convertible went by in a cacophony of exhaust, gear whine and solid lifter clatter!

That… was Paul Pitman’s ’69 Hemi GTX Convertible, I’d heard about the car at meetings (I was a member of Mopars Unlimited, a local car club, back in the day), and although I’d heard a few Hemi cars (mostly getting on/off of trailers) at car shows, I’d never heard anything like that!

Fast forward to this year… I’m at a convenience store in Dalton Gardens Idaho, gassing up on the way back from one of the usual wild goose chases…I see this “Hemi” Charger, a new one… guy’s gassing up, I’m done but I wait for him, cause I want to hear it. I want to hear The Hemi!

It’s sitting on the usual 20” wheels, dark Silver Grey, 4 door (a four door Charger?). Yeah, times have changed… He finally fires it up to go. I can’t hear anything. It’s got dual exhaust, the car moves off, and it’s gone.

Well, I was kinda disappointed… That was a Hemi? I’ve heard brand new Mustangs and Camaros that actually have a decent exhaust note. In this day and age of big “fart cans” on the little Hondas, you’d think it’d be ok to actually let that Hemi breathe a little bit… and that it would sound like something.


I thought about Paul Pitman’s GTX, a REAL Hemi, and how I never forgot its sound, and this Hemi, that had no sound to remember. Emasculated, not even a shadow of its former self, just a meaningless plastic badge on a big family sedan (please don’t anyone with a similar car take offense), how symbolic it was… of the changes in our country.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2009 06:41PM by beemrmax.