This is me at age 13, back in May 1997 very proud of my purchase of a rusty old 1970 Plymouth Satellite! I have yet t drive this, my first car, but I will soon - I hope!
The car is a 318ci 2bbl, 904 auto with the 8-3/4 rearend. The color is Deep Metallic Burnt Orange inside and out. Bench seat, column shift. It came with two broadcast sheets, one under the front seat and another under the rear. Classed as High Price range, and specially built at the Lynch Rd assembly plant in Michigan as a Dealer Demonstrator for a dealership in Newfoundland.
Owner number one was an older man who after a few years sold or gave the car to his son. The son backed it into a telephone pole and did considerable damage to the pass rear quarter. This is the damage that has held me back in restoring this car, after nine years I got my hands on a Plum Crazy Purple 383 RoadRunner and butchered it... before you start attacking me on this... the Road Runner had been sitting in a feild and then in the woods for probably 20 years... there really wasn't much left of it. It had no motor, no interior, etc. So with the rear corner and tailpanel off the RoadRunner I can now start piecing my Satellite back together!
Owner Number three was a local man, bought it in 1988 or 1989, drove it for a year, but parker it due to motor problems. I found the car while walking to school at age 11 and fell in love with it, believing it was a Dukes Of Hazzard car... but the love affair didn't end once I realized the mistake I had made... I began saving my money and figured by June 1997 I would have $500 to offer to the owner. Unfortunately the owner had been keeping it in his father's backyard, and his father wanted it gone. So in late April 1997 he paid the son $100 and called the junkyard. I was on my way home from school when I saw the two truck there with MY car on it! I actually cried! I had the presence of mind to notice the name on the tow truck door and called the junkyard immediately. It took two weeks of phone calls, but after pestering the owner once or twice a day for that long he finally gave in and sold it to me for $300. Being underage, and the junkyard owner not knowing how young I was I had no way to get to the junkyard and then to register the car... what to do... I called a two truck company, who agreed to pick up the car and then I would pay them back the purchase price and the twoing fee. So with $357 I handed to the driver of Marr's Towing, I had purchased my frst car, a 1970 Satellite!
Then the S#!T hit the fan! My parents and especially my uncle [who had agreed to let me keep the car in his yard, with the expectation that I would not follow through on the purchase] went ballastic! I didn't hear the end of this one till about 3 years later when the car made the trip to my father's garage, and there it sat till my birthday December 16 2007, when I had it towed to my newly expanded garage. In the fall of 2007 I bought the RoadRunner and cut it up for body parts. Now I am buying the rest of the needed pieces and hopefully in 1-2 years she will again hit the roadways... but possibly with a 440ci under the hood!
Photo below, car at my father's garage in about 2000?
