For those of you who don't know my story, here's a quick refresher:
I buy a '74 Pinto wagon to hot rod (make it look like the Hot Wheels car). I go to a salvage yard looking for a tranny/rear end and they ask me what it's going in. I say a Pinto wagon and instead of laughing, I get these really strange looks and a guy says a wagon just came in, do I want to see it? Turns out they want $200 for the whole car. Underneath, it has new shocks and tires. I figure that it's a bargain for a parts car. They don't have the title yet, so it never gets processed as a salvage car. When they get the title, I tell them to pull it around front and I'll tow it home. They tell me to just bring a battery, it runs. Nice little 2.0L engine, 4-speed, 3.55 rear end. 33 mpg, doesn't use oil (blows a hint of smoke on start-up, but that's it). :P
A battery, $75 paint job, exhaust flange gasket, new steering wheel, carpet, and headliner later, this is now my daily driver (30 mile commute to and from work 5 days a week). So I've got about $450 total invested in the car (and that includes the CD player, speakers, and speaker boxes, too). ::)
Lately, I've been contemplating getting into the engine just to see how it's holding up. I figure it has 187,000 on it. :-\
Tonight, I'm driving out to Wal-Mart to do some shopping and pull into a stall driving my '72 wagon. A couple in an SUV pull into a stall on the other side of the lane and both get out really quickly, obviously looking at my car. I'm thinking: Do I know them? No.... Did I cut them off? ???
So I step out of my car and the man goes "That used to be my car! Where did you get it?" I told him I bought it from the salvage yard. He says he had seen it parked in front of the court house once before I had repainted it and also that several friends had told him they had seen it, but it was now painted black (it's actually Ford "True Blue," a fairly dark blue). I'd have freaked out and thought I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone if I sold my car to a salvage yard and then saw it driving around town. :o
So I get the skinny on my car:
He was the original owner and ordered it from the local dealer in 1972. 8)
The mileage (82,000 when I got it, 87,000 now) was original...hasn't rolled over. 8)
He still has the owner's manual and I can stop by his office and pick it up if I want it (duh!). ;) 8)
Turns out he and his wife had bought a big new house and his wife forced him to get rid of it because she didn't want it parked out front. They got $50 and the salvage yard towed it away. I gave $200 and drive it everywhere I go. 8)
It's always nice to know the history of the car you're driving. Makes me like that little wagon even more than I did before. And about tearing into the engine...eh...I don't think I'll be doing that just yet. ;D
WOW....I like the story.....Heres mine.
It stared with my grandpa. He had a 74 Pinto wagon. It was perfect, garage kept, 59k mi, Light yellow, black int, 2300 auto. He was the original owner. In 89, he was in an accident. He and my sister were fine but the car lost its life.
Well, in 96 when I turned 16, I needed a pinto. So i bought the worst one I could find. A light blue Squire wagon with a V-6 (with a nasty oil addiction) bad trans, 270k mi, nasty interior, with no working accessories. It was perfect!. Well, over the next 3 years I restored it INSIDE AND OUT! The car is all new. Well, one day i was working on the headlight switch and a registration from the early nineties falls out of the dash. It was not the person who i bought it from (she claimed to be the first owner). So i went to my friends dad who is a police officer. I asked him if he could run the plates and find out about the car, He came back to me with some grim news.
Here goes: in late 79, the car was in a bad accident that had 3 people airlifted (no data in their conditions). It was then totaled (this explains the light blue front frame rail and the silver one). About 6 months later the car was salvaged and sold again. In 82, it was in another bad accident. The driver and partner had a disagreement in the car which caused the driver to loose control. It spun out of the freeway and hit the center divider. It caused a chain reaction and 5 other cars were then involved. It was then totaled...again (this explains the excellent condition of the wood decal on the passenger side and the welds inside the body). In 1983 the car resurfaced (duh) and was bought buy the owner who I has assumed was the original one. Well, all was good until 93 when the car was stolen and involved in a murder. He was sketchy on telling me more but it was not the owner that died and he didn't say if the murder was taken place in it or if a body was transported in it or what (probably better that way). Well the car was in police hands (with the windows rolled down and deer sleeping and living in it, i imagine) until an auction in early 96 when the liar that sold it to me bought it. When we ripped out the interior (we had to, it smelled so bad) we found, well, i don't want to say. It was just so foul in there that i had to rent a pressure washer to clean it.
Well, you might be wondering if I am afraid of my car. Heres the way i see it. If there is some bad ora around the vehicle, It must not apply to me because I have put so much love (and lets not forget about money) into it. I have owned it 9 years now and it has NEVER left me any where. So here we have it. A happy story, and a, well, um, another story. I hope this didn't weird any one out by the way.
Here is what it looked like when i got it and about a year later.
Take Care
Alberto
sounds kinda like that movie Christine. a kid buys a car and the car's possesed.
The whole dead people in pintos thing brings back memories. I dont know the history of the one i drove, but while restoring it my friend and i realized the front half and the back half were different cars. And thats when things started to make sense.
I had owned the car for almost a year before deciding to restore it. But at night when I would be out runnin around it just felt like...... well like..... if you looked in the rearview mirror there would be a corpse staring back at you. I ripped the mirror off a lot. I thought it was just me for awhile, but i left a friend borrow it a couple times. But he wouldnt borrow the car unless it was really really important. He never told me why til after i sold it.
The guy i sold it to, drove it for a few weeks and sent it to the junkyard and had it crushed. I was really really pissed. But he finally told me, right before i was going to punch him, that he felt like he wasnt the only one in the car after dark, and it scared him so bad thats why he crushed the car. Welllllll I guess i could understand that, so i left go!
Just wish I knew the full history of why the car was 2 halves, but maybe its just for the best if i dont.
Quote from: krazi on April 16, 2005, 11:34:17 PM
sounds kinda like that movie Christine. a kid buys a car and the car's possesed.
Hey he named that '79 wagon Christine because of the fact that it does seem alive and that he loves that movie. So good one for bringing that up.
Quote from: dirt track demon on April 23, 2005, 12:21:31 PM
The whole dead people in pintos thing brings back memories. I dont know the history of the one i drove, but while restoring it my friend and i realized the front half and the back half were different cars. And thats when things started to make sense.
  I had owned the car for almost a year before deciding to restore it. But at night when I would be out runnin around it just felt like...... well like..... if you looked in the rearview mirror there would be a corpse staring back at you. I ripped the mirror off a lot.  I thought it was just me for awhile, but i left a friend borrow it a couple times. But he wouldnt borrow the car unless it was really really important. He never told me why til after i sold it.Â
 The guy i sold it to, drove it for a few weeks and sent it to the junkyard and had it crushed. I was really really pissed. But he finally told me, right before i was going to punch him, that he felt like he wasnt the only one in the car after dark, and it scared him so bad thats why he crushed the car. Welllllll I guess i could understand that, so i left go!
Just wish I knew the full history of why the car was 2 halves, but maybe its just for the best if i dont.
Hey Dirt Track Demon,
Wish I had that pinto!!!
I wish i would have never left it go.