well heres one with an Aussie flavour! and its a pickup! or as us Aussies call em, its a ute mate! an Aussie Chrysler ute mate... Chrysler Australia made a newer body shape than the old revamped mid 60s Dart style. early 70's with a lot of American styling Im sure youll agree. Featuring the Aussie Hemi 6cylinder that was available in 245 cubes, 265 cubes, and what I got here is a low compression poverty pack 215 cubes! For the tradesman on a budget to haul bricks n timber, or the poor farmer to cart hay or the odd sheep and his trusty cattledog riding shotgun in the back. The utes came as a Valiant with a few more creature comforts like carpet you could haul bricks and take mum to church on a Sunday. the lowly Dodge ute was destined to be a heathen and just get used for work duties... Now the name Dodge to an Aussie of my generation , who grew up (?) on a steady diet of Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, and Bullitt, the name Dodge meant Muscle, meant Tuff, and meant good ol US of A . So 7 weeks ago I aquired this original white tradies ute off ebay. Bought sight unseen from pics, and a phone call ( remember them?) when people spoke person to person not emails and txts. When you could judge a bloke, and the car he was selling by talking on the phone to suss out if he was " Fair Dinkum" or not (was gonna say dodgy) Anyway nearly 2 months later after much cutting welding grinding sanding knocking out tbe odd dent , etching, priming , blocking, finding more dents,repriming wet sanding masking spraying jet black, more masking and fineline taping, I mixed up a brew of homegrown Hemi Orange acrylic laquer! 1.5 litres Organic Orange 1 litre Fast Red a fair splash of micro metallic a dash of Red Maroon and a smidge of black the colour looked good! Id already laid down the jet black hood and a squirt up the side to be taped off and finelined then 8 hours spraying countless coats of orange then unmask the black bits and spray countless coats of clear laquer, thinned to suit. Then hours of 1200 wetrubbing and machine compounding! to a killer shine.... Working on mechanicals now , engines painted , fitted headers , new exhaust with a nice note, rear brakes done, working on front now, oh also dumped the rear 2 inches but no pix of it sitting level as such yet shes still up on stands.
and more....getting carried away with Dodge Muscle decals now. Well with Dodge Chrysler, Valiant Charger cross warpaint this visual hybrid gotta be over the top!
did I say Over the Top! well a roof spoiler is 70's US Indy mag wheels and a SuperBee decal. more to come! back to work......
Fun stuff. Check out uncle Tony's garage on you tube. He has a great set of videos on tuning Chrysler 6 cylinders...very interesting as they don't respond to some typical performance mods.
How much do we like mopars huh. This is stike one on your Buick card. Tri strikes and your out Bloke. Nice work tho
yes Im a regular watcher of Uncle Tony, hes cool and tells it like it is. Slant 6s are his thing , theres nothing relative to the Aussie Hemi Six .
Gee mate, thx 4 da warning, only 2 more chances hey Better stay quiet about my daily driver Subaru Forester then.
at least its GM...And you only "thought about it" ...didnt you? if we got hung for our thoughts how many of us would still be here?
In the 60s the hyper pac equipped leaning towers of power frequently won stock eliminator. https://www.hotrod.com/articles/mopp-0305-1962-plymouth-valiant-slant-six/
I likes me a good mopar .. 451 low deck stroker a833 4 speed dana 60 i had to sell it ...so could do a frame off on my 70gs hopefully i will have my tri shield 482/turbo400/converter been a 2 year plus marathon on my 70 gs soon to conclude. I have never seen a dodge like that before its cool
MOPAR had some of the more bizarre styling. Before he passed Hoover told me that a stage 3 426 max wedge made 490 hp stock in the showroom. It was way ahead of its time. Here is my spouse's Polara 500:
Ive owned quite a few Mopars with 225 cube Slant Six engines. The Aussie Hemi Six is a different animal. heres the story on it Chrysler Hemi-6 Engine https://g.co/kgs/sDGZc9
Out of a garage fire in Newfoundland, landed here in Saint John. Previous repair shop had used adhesive for a replacement quarter patch. The adhesive didn't like the heat. Complete new quarter going on as well as repairs to the lower rear window channel area & a wheelhouse. Car is pretty solid including floor & trunk. Think most of the effort will be remediating the smoke damage all through it ! Original 440 car, automatic with a replacement engine. Was a really nice dark green with a black vinyl top as new.
Neat car!! (Truck??) Full disclosure, if I wasn't a "Buick guy", I'd be either an olds or Mopar "guy" (if I could afford to be a Mopar guy....). They're kinda weird and the build quality of the late 60's/early 70's mopar cars are very well known to be "lacking", but I've always been kinda drawn to them for some reason.
Well , same reason as anyone drawn to muscle grunt and motorvation and theres lots of different flavours. With Buick we are at the high end, the top shelf as we say here. Theory behind muscle cars is intermediate body stuffed with biggest motor they can get in there, with minimal creature comforts , at a price the youth of the day could afford. Buick broke the mold for those with the dollars and sense. The night I was offered a sum of money for the Ford Falcon GT that Id built up from a trashed wreck, I must admit I went looking at Mopars... The offer wasnt enough to but a house, land, or shed, and putting it in a bank was dead money, if I was to sell my GT it HAD to be replaced by something better. I looked at half a dozen Mopars online and one on the ground, but all had the wrong motors.....upgraded to 440s If Im spending big dollars I was a car with provenance, the right motor and trans, matching numbers, and in great condition. My journey to the triple black Stage 1 was a trip akin to Alice going down the rabbit hole and screams of Destiny! Ill tell more later , but heres some of the cars I looked at online in Oz in the 50-100K Au$t range. stay tuned. ......
