To my knowledge, I’m the fourth owner. According to my cousin in-law, Greg, the car was originally sold to a dairy farmer in Chino, CA, who then sold it to Greg’s uncle in the early 70’s. Said uncle immediately put a six pack on it, painted it black, added white Mohave inserts to the black vinyl seats, added some other "interesting" interior touches and went racing. He blew the original tranny in the mid 70’s and tossed in a built 727 from a ’68 GTX, which is still in the car today. Greg bought it in ‘78, drove it on one 2,400 mile trip and then pretty much parked it for 3 decades. Seven years ago, he had the car repainted black (I yelled at him for that - shoulda gone back to green!) and that’s when things took an ugly turn. Although the paint is pretty nice (especially for black) and the body is as clean as a 39,xxx mile CA car should be, the body shop got more than Greg’s money - they took his 440. Yes, the body shop was kind enough to swap engines (one of those notorious “hidden charges“), replacing the numbers matching 440 with a 440 out of a ’69 Imperial. Sad thing is Greg never knew - when he first called me about the car being for sale he told me the engine was numbers matching. I had him run the numbers on the block and the rest is history. Sure, it’s still a 440 and it runs strong, so I’m not complaining, but a real blow to the sack nonetheless. Buuuut it’s not the end of the world: the paint, interior, tranny and motor are all altered, and the car is thankfully very clean, so it’s pretty hard for me to devalue the car by building up the motor, for example. In any light, I’ve done a bit of work to it already - replaced the carb (the old AFB was junk), put in a new Mallory Unilite dizzy, full tune up, new wheels and tires, painted the grill…just trying to correct what I can. I've got a Hughes cam waiting to go in and a lot of interior odds and ends to fix. Greg replaced the tank, gas lines, brake lines and other crap when the body was repainted, so the car drives out nice.
I’m very new to Mopars and I know there are some extremely knowledgeable guys on this site, so I’m really excited to meet all of you. I’m also on FBBO (which is also a killer site) but the nest seems more specialized. Anyway, that was a novel…here are some pics of the car when I first got it and some more recent pics before I put it away for the winter…

And here are a few pics of the car now - new wheels/tires (the old tires had baaaad flat spots), repainted grill, purple 80's window tint removed, new 'GTX' decal, etc...

