1976 Dodge Aspen Custom

I have always been a MOPAR love since my dad told me stories of his 1970 Dodge Charger R/T that he and his cousins drove when they were in their late teens getting into trouble. I grew up owning a couple older muscle cars but they usually required more work that I could even hope of giving them.

So fast forward to the 1st of April 2008! I was surfing Kijiji I think its called looking some car to just drive. Mainly I was looking for a Chrysler Daytona as I had always loved them and wanted something good on gas. Anyways, in the middle of my search in the cars under $5k catagory I come across an ad for a 1976 Dodge Aspen for $1500.

When I opened the ad it was very basic, no more than 10 words along with 4 pictures, 3 of which are below. At first I thought it might have been an april fool's joke since any old car seems to go for at least a couple thousand in this Province. So just for the hell of it I emailed him on April 2nd.

The same day I got a reply. My questions were pretty simply, the biggest being "would it survive a 6 hour drive back to my place?" The seller said it would. In fact every question I asked seemed to have a really good answer, almost to the point that I was starting to doubt the seller. (Sorry Cameron if you are reading this lol)

On April 4th I told my father about the car and at first he was a little suspicious, mainly because he didn't want me jumping into another project that was way over my head and my pocket book. I sent him the pictures and that piqued his curiosity. He told me all these questions to ask the seller (90% of which I had already asked and answered). By this point my dad was really interested! Now how do I physically go look at the car without wheels? A friend offered to drive me down but after pricing it out I realized I needed to save as much money as possible since the only other way would be to take a bus down (and if it turned out bad, a bus back).

In the meantime my father was headed with two of his cousins (none other than the two he used to get in trouble while driving his charger with). Dad talked them into going to look at the car on their way back through Kamloops, that day was April 6th.

The entire way my dad's cousins where trying to talk my dad to talk me out of the car. They said that for $1500 the car would be a rust bucket, probably would smoke or knock while running, etc. At 10:30am Sunday morning I get a call from my dad saying the seller won't answer his cellphone and that they can't find the car. They said they could only look for another 10 minutes and then they had to get going. I immediately called the seller's cellphone and it just rang and rang. My hopes for the car seemed to be crushed.

at 10:54 exactly to the minute, I get a phone call. On the other end was one of my dad's cousins by the name of Ray. The conversation goes exactly as below:

Kyle: Hello?
Ray: Kyle?
Kyle: Yeah
Ray: You just bought yourself a car
Kyle: (speechless) o..ok....
Ray: Yeah your dad just put a down deposit on the car, but you are going to need new tires.
Kyle: (thinking that I cant afford it)
Ray: Yeah your dad and Grant (other cousin) took it for a test drive and were gone for an hour and burnt the tires off the car.
Kyle: (I just started laughing)

When they had first found the car my dad said his cousin's jaws dropped. They spent the next 20 minutes going over the car top to bottom. There are no other guys I would rather have looking at the car unless you could have added my cousin Travis into the mix.

So dad paid a simple $60 deposit to hold that car for us for a couple days. My dad agreed to drive me down to Kamloops to pick up the car. The day was none other than my dad's very own birthday which meant allot. So we both piled into his VW Golf that he got free out of a garbage dump (Im surprised the thing made it down and back) and headed down to Kamloops.

When we got there I finally got to see the car for myself and the car was exactly as the seller described. We were in Kamloops for only an hour, eating lunch and getting the insurance, then we were gone down the road.

Everywhere I stopped for gas (quite a few places lol but damn I love that 360!) I kept getting thumbs up and more than a few people asking about the car and telling me about theirs. Of course the best was the cute girl behind the counter of a Gas Station/Convenience Store in Little Fort (if you are reading this, yes I thought you were cute lol).

At 150 Mile House dad and I had to split up. He was headed back for Quesnel while I had to go to Likely. The car was running fine without problems except for needing front shocks badly and a leak in the rear seal of the automatic tranny. Dad went on his way and I drove the hour out to Likely.

I pulled into my uncle Brian's driveway with the car and noticed the car wasn't going into park (console automatic). My uncle determined that it was most likely the linkage was broken. Within a few days though my uncle and a couple of his friends got the car up on ramps and fixed the linkage (took more time for the car to get up onto ramps than it did to fix the linkage). Of course I wasn't around so my uncle took it out for a spin which involved lighting the tires up twice and hacking a nut.

So thats the story of how the car came to be where it is now just awaiting a few things.