DaveInVA wrote: 
Did you see the Mokes? Those are more Grady's thing. You two'd have a lot to talk about because he never gets rid of anything that might be fixed one day.

Here's their old website, with "Who Did Grady Meet?" but if you go to the home page, you can see the overgrown home/pool/lot they bought. Obviously 15 years later they've done a little to make it liveable.

This was my '58 FIAT 1100 Sedan. I actually liked it. Got great mileage and was to slow to get a ticket in. The hamsters were running at full speed up on the freeway. It even had "suicide" doors. Unfortunately the next owner took the engine out of it to replace one in a convertible FIAT of the same vintage that was worth a lot more.

FIAT - F*cked In Ass Transportion  
My '72 Rover 3500S is visible in my driveway in the background. 

FIAT 850
My dad's was dark blue but looked like this one. POS
First car I ever drove at 15 yrs old 1977 or so.
Fix It Again Tony.

 Coaxial wrote: 
Indeed.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 


Very cool!. I've owned a few FIAT's myself but so far never a 500. I've had a '58 1100 sedan and 2 later model X1/9's that technically weren't FIAT's as Bertone took those over around '83 or so.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Very cool, both the article and the cars.

My friends Kristy & Grady made the WSJ: 
 
 

 oldviolin wrote: 
no. no i dont. please explain it to me. 

 Proclivities wrote: 
Actually I did have one of those, and a suit to match...

 buzz wrote: 
see how that works?

 oldviolin wrote: 
It could've been worse:

 oldviolin wrote: 
thats *so* weird. i was just thinking the same thing. 

I test-drove an automatic-trans R/T shortly before borrowing the 6.1 SRT-8, and I didn't notice much of a power difference, if any  - they were both "PLENTY!" 

In fact, the choice I keep coming back to is basically your exact car, the R/T with the 6-speed and some minor mods to make it more entertaining.  The SRT-8 comes with enough of a fuel economy penalty that it more than offsets the minor additional power, to me. 

Mostly theoretical at this point, with a kid in college and a step-kid in braces, but if my daily-driver coughs up a lung on the way home this week, I'd be looking for a 6MT R/T in black.

 Bill_Rockoff wrote: 
That's right. They came with the colors in 70. I loved those things. The Super Bees too. We had a couple of Super Birds around town here also.

 Bill_Rockoff wrote: 
It's a monster, no doubt.  I've got a black 2014 R/T with a six-speed manual transmission.  The rear mufflers have been removed and I'm constantly being complimented on it's sound and presence.  I'm diggin' it, no doubt.

 

 oldviolin wrote:

 
The Road Runner was a '70.  BUT, there were some oddball parts, because it had apparently been a drag car for a while, and we'd run into things like "the '70 flywheel doesn't fit the transmission bellhousing, it needs the '69 flywheel and clutch assembly - is it the original 4-speed?" 

We knew a guy locally who could make the nose, rear window assembly, and wing assembly to make a faux Superbird out of one of these (or a faux Daytona out of a Charger.)  I am still tempted, now that B-body prices have come down and my disposable income may begin to actually exist in the next year.  But it will not be a likelihood for "driving this car for dating with mah girl."

Edit to add: the 5-year-old is 20 now, and he sure was in one hell of a hurry to reinstall the passenger's seat and footpegs on this thing, presumably to drive it for dating his girl.

 buzz wrote: 
Never want to drive my 68 Opal Kadett again. 4 cylinders, 3 of which sort of worked. Sewing machines had more power than that thing.

 oldviolin wrote: 
not right now, but thanks for asking.

 FourFortyEight wrote:

 

The Road Runner went pretty good for an old car.  I only drove it a few miles - got the tires loose when the secondaries opened up in 3rd gear, at probably 80 mph, and barked 'em going into 4th at probably a bit more than that.  That was probably quite enough for a car with no seatbelts and an alignment we did by eye, at night.  It got sold a few days later to fund a race car.  As the owner said, "I couldn't wait to get this thing built, but now I can't wait to get this thing gone.  It's not a race car, and it won't tow a race car to the track, so $#%k it - who needs it?"

I borrowed an SRT-8 with the 6.1 liter / 6MT for a day.  That was a good day, car-wise.  The dealer who loaned it to me said "Drive it like it's yours."  The 5-year-old son I mentioned below was, at the time, a 15-year-old with a learner's permit, and he had been driving a manual-transmission Miata since he could reach the clutch pedal.  (The previous year, at age 14, he had driven the Miata on a racetrack.)  I asked the guy, " 'drive it like it's mine' means my kid will be driving it, is that okay?"  I was assured that was no problem.  You can find a couple of applicable Youtube video clips by searching for my user name and "SRT-8." 

That car was its own 4th of July parade wherever it went, and its own car show wherever it stopped.  Rolling up through carpool in a black SRT-8, with the obviously-a-manual-transmission kind of sounds it makes in a carpool line, was probably a pretty cool high school moment.  You can't even properly soundtrack such a moment with the car stereo, because you'd have to pick either "Back In Black" or "Hell's Bells" or "Highway Star" or one of several ZZ Top songs, and it's really best to let the exhaust sort of imply eight or nine such songs at once.   

My wife refused to even ride in it - she hates "gas guzzlers," and anything meant to be faster than her Forester qualifies as a "gas guzzler" even if it gets better fuel economy than her Forester.  The SRT-8 did NOT get better fuel economy than a Forester, but it's a pretty sweet mile-eater on all other fronts and I LOVE everything else about them.

 Bill_Rockoff wrote: 
'69?