In March of 1973, I bought my first ’66 Charger from my Step-dad.  Throughout 1975 and 1976 I was buying parts for the Charger at an all Mopar junkyard in Sunland called Last Stop.  One day in 1976 (while at the junkyard) I was “shootin’ the breeze” with one of the guys there, talking about changing my 318 automatic Charger into a 383 4-speed.  The guy told me a fellow that use to work there had such a car and might be interested in selling it.  He said the guy (Terry Williams) now lived in Northern California, but was coming home for Thanksgiving.  I was able to hook-up with him and decided to buy the car, although he was not ready to part with the car at that time.  He brought it back a few weeks later and it became mine in December 1976 for an even one thousand dollars.  In 1966, Dodge built 37,000 Chargers, of those, 2800 were 383 c.i. with a 4 speed transmission.  I’ve always felt lucky to get this car.

The car was in pretty good shape.  In 1978, in preparation for taking the car cross-country (to visit friends & family on the east coast), I fixed up the engine and transmission and put a cheap paint job on the car.  In order to have enough money for the car and the trip, I had to move back with my parents.  During that time, my mom had been having a very attractive young friend over (from work) to visit on the weekends.  Hearing of my pending cross-country trip, she volunteered to go along and help with the driving.  She had never seen much the country east of the Rockies.  A few days into the trip, Carol and I became more than just friends).  That was August of 1978.  As far as “helping with the driving,” as soon as she took over (as in, immediately), the speedometer drive gear broke.  That was the end of her helping with the driving  (a ¼ mile).  She was just too nervous driving “my baby”.

In 1979, with the gas shortage, my commute had me filling up at the gas station every other day, since I couldn’t make it 4 days on a tank of gas (remember the odd-n-even filling days during the shortage?).   In May of 1979, Carol and I each bought Ford Fiestas.  Mine was silver and hers was orange (yes, the one we still have).  I sold mine in ’81 to pay for our honeymoon in Hawaii and went back to driving the Charger.  The commute at that time was much less and the gas shortage was over.  The car was again my “daily driver” up until 1985.  

The car sat garaged ‘til we moved here in ’88.  After sitting for 3 years, almost never driven, it didn’t want to run very well.  After cleaning up the gas tank and brakes, the car was on the road again in ’89.  It was some time in ’89 that Harry Greer (one of the founding members of our club) noticed the Charger and left a note on the car.  I joined the club shortly thereafter.  Being around a bunch of nice cars inspired me to start fixing up the car.  In 1992, I restored the interior and then in ’94, I took the car completely apart and had the body done.  The restoration of the body took about a year.  I have been enjoying the car every since.