DRIVING BACK IN TIME

Seeing a couple of 1970s-era cars like these on the road is a rare site especially as casually as we were driving these two cars through the 1980s. Standing next to my SS396 Chevelle, I could have imagined owning that car forever - as could my lifetime friend and fellow car buff Jim Hignite.   Jim's yellow 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T was quite a beast - a 440 cubic-inch motor with a Holley 780 double-pumper, four-speed with the classic "serious" version of Hurst's famed 'Vertical-Gate 'shifter with a reverse lock-out, and a 4.11:1 rear axle ratio - for a blend of daily-driver reliability and ready-to-uncork strip bracket racing on Wednesday and Saturday nights.

To this day we laugh when we get together with our other friends from our old neighborhood and reflect about the extra free time we had back then to tinker, wash and wax, and pour money into our cars.

Today we're still car buffs and enjoy those valued teenage years.  Yet when you're 18, you can somehow find time to tinker with a hobby like cars with seemingly endless moments.   Today we're all Dads with wives and kids -- and cherish time with our families, so now we're including the next generations as we tinker a bit less with our collector cars, motorcycles and boats -- yet get some welcomed help from the kids on the "washing and waxing'" that we didn't have back when we were 18!

What's great about automobiles from earlier eras is that you can still find and buy them.  And like reconnecting with a familiar song you loved at a time years ago, you can relive those memories when you drive in that special car.   And being able to drive a "symphony in 'agitated metal' is truly "music to the ears" of a true car enthusiast!