I read an old car magazine from 2008 about a guy who butchered a one of fourteen 1969 Plymouth Sport Satellite convertible to build what he called “Project Frankenstein“.

He thought it was a cute name…I thought it was grotesquely accurate.

Project Frankenstein guy took a 135,000 mile three on the tree 318 V-8 survivor and turned it into some kind of cutting-edge, resto-mod lab experiment.

He “was still working the bugs out of it” at the time the article came out back in 2008.

This guy had one of the rarest Plymouths on the planet, according to Mopar guru Galen Govier and he morphed it into yet another modified B-body. He took a bulletproof and very basic engine-transmission combination and turned it into a test tube for new tech.

He defended this by bragging that he “didn’t turn it into another GTX clone”. That may be admirable in the loosest interpretation of the word “admirable” but what he actually did was deprive today’s and tomorrow’s Mopar guys of a very unique piece of Chrysler Corporation history. Not only that, he would have been the focus of attention at any large Mopar meet because of his unique 3-on-the-tree Satellite convertible.

The only hope is some of the 14 cars are still around and not in the hands of another guy committed to a pretty bad idea.

I’ve never liked seeing someone grab an old ride like a barebones 9000 mile slant 6 Plymouth Satellite, gut it and turn it into a big block clone car. There’s only one reason these guys massacre cars like that-they want to save a few bucks on bodywork.

There’s nothing that cuts the resto-mod bill down faster than a pristine, always garaged, babied, low-mileage Grandpa’s car. Grandpa may have loved the car but the minute his heirs get involved in an estate sale that old ride is going straight to the Land of the Big Blocks.

These resto-mod guys aren’t stupid-they can pay two or three times book value to Grandpa’s heirs, promise to keep it intact and have the old six-banger engine yanked out of the car before the 6 o’clock news that night.

The cost savings are enormous but the ethical questions circle the whole project because more and more classic cars are coming out in reproduction bodies. We are on the cutting edge of 3-D computer technology so any car ever built is literally a laptop away from reality.

You don’t have to cut up Grandpa’s Plymouth so let’s leave a few around so the next generation will see what we really drove and not another Hemi GTX clone.

I’d like to end this on a positive note. I was at a swap meet in the spring and this ’68 Satellite was for sale. It was the real deal, slant six Grandpa’s survivor car and the guy who owned it was definitely a big block guy.

He drove this old Plymouth for awhile and he definitely wasn’t impressed with the lukewarm performance so he wrestled with the idea of cranking out another GTX clone.

Happily, he didn’t. He sold it to somebody who truly appreciated this survivor for what it was…a unique piece of Plymouth B-body history.

The world is a better place-we didn’t need another Frankenstein Plymouth.

Jerry Sutherland

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Morris Minors were not the stuff of car guy dreams during their 1948-71 production run, but they were a passable choice as a second car because of their fuel economy.

The trade-off for great mileage was an under-powered little British car that had no place on a modern freeway unless it was being towed up to an acceptable highway speed.

The little Morris Minors were great suburban cars because they could easily drive at the much lower suburban speed limits that barely challenged a kid on a pedal bike.

My family owned a few Morris Minors as a second car choice behind our primary choices from Chrysler when I was a kid.

Our Morris Minors were hot and slow in the summer and cold and slow in the winter. The Morris Minors in our family were occasionally replaced by British rival Austin as our second family car choice and the legacy of underpowered British cars continued in our family during the 60s.

My older brother attempted to convince my Highway Patrol father to let him put a Buick big block in a Morris Minor when my brother was about 16, but that idea was greeted with a hearty round of laughter by my dad.

Eventually the Morris Minors blew up and eventually they were gone from my family car legacy in the 60s. But I always had a soft spot in my heart for the little Morris Minors and I seek them out at any car show on the very rare occasion when I see one.

I was at a recent car show when I spotted one in the parking area. The Morris was not entered into the show and I am no Morris Minor expert, so I was not able to determine the year of the car. It looked like a newer Morris Minor in my opinion, but Morris Minors pretty much look alike in a German Shepherd kind of way, so age is somewhat indeterminate for both car and dog.

The Morris had a British Columbia safety sticker from 1971 as well as a university parking pass and Federation of British Columbia Naturalists on its passenger windows. It was in great shape and it was clear that it had an owner (or series of owners) who cared about maintenance and the car’s best interests.

What it did not have was an actual owner anywhere near or around it who could explain how this little British car managed to survive all of these years in such great shape after it crossed the Big Pond.

The owner could even reveal the actual age of the car and its long journey in life from all of those decades ago to a 21st century car show at an Alberta lake resort. The fact that the car was parked in a lot with no indication of trailer queen status was also a point of interest for me.

I left a business card with a brief message about how I wanted to talk to the owner but I will not hold my breath if human nature and past history is any indication.

Maybe I will cross paths with the car and its owner at a future show so I can revisit this story and fill in the blanks on the Mystery of the Morris Minor.

Jim Sutherland

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I was at the annual car show in beautiful Sylvan Lake, Alberta recently and I spotted a truck in the show that really grabbed my interest.

It was registered in the show as a 1972 Chevy short-box pickup and it was owned by a car guy from a place called Glenwood New Mexico.

Glenwood, New Mexico is a very small community that is home to about 300 people and is 65 miles from a small New Mexico city of over 10,000 people called Silver City.

Just about the only familiar name to me in this story was Chevrolet and I really wanted to meet the owner.

For starters, I wanted to know why his stylish 1972 truck had a front clip from an older Chevy pickup. The front end of his truck was clearly donated from an earlier Chevy truck model and was at least two years older than a ’72 grille.

The truck had a 454 big block and was backed up by a 5-speed manual transmission. Overall the Chevy was a clean driver with a sporty paint job and the sharp style of a short-box pickup truck.

I also wanted to know how and why a 1972 Chevy truck from Glenwood New Mexico was at a car show in a western Canadian resort town that was one day and 2 hours from its home. The distance down the highway from Glenwood to Sylvan Lake is about 1600 miles or 2600 km. Any way you measure the distance, it was clear the Chevy and its owner were both a long way from home.

The Sylvan Lake car show is a good production and features some amazing vehicles with great stories behind them. This show even had a wedding party show up anticipating a few shots with some of the many cars at the event, although the bride and groom arrived shortly after storm clouds were in the area and many of the cars were gone.

Nothing clears out a car show faster than a threat of bad weather and this one was no exception. I thought I would actually benefit from an abrupt end to the show because I would locate the owner of the 1972 Chevy, a guy who travelled 1600 long miles to be at the show.

Then I could ask him why he chose to drive so far to attend a show and how was the trip. I could ask him if a 454 Chevy engine with a 5-speed tranny in a light pickup was able to travel to the show economically enough for him to avoid selling his first born child to cover the gas bill.

So many questions and so few owners-I never did find the guy and he never called, even though I left a business card and a short note explaining why I wanted to interview him. We at MSCC have found that the odds of a car guy response to our under-the-windshield notes and cards are pretty long.

Frankly, we expect a return phone call from Mila Kunis or Jennifer Aniston long before we expect a return phone call from most car guys when it comes to an interview request left with a vehicle. The owner of the 1972 Chevy truck from New Mexico was no exception to the rule and we do not hold much hope that we will ever get the story behind his journey.

We won’t hang around our phone waiting for the guy to call while we sing that pathetically desperate Vikki Carr “It Must be Him” song either. Another great car story is always right around the corner and all we have to do is actually track down the owner to get the story.

It is that easy and that hard in practice.

NEXT CASE-The Strange Case of the Missing Morris Minor Owner at the Sylvan show…feel free to call too.

Jim Sutherland

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Every now and then I become aware of a country song that captures the philosophy of old trucks, presumably because more country songs focus on old trucks than do hip hop or metal songs.

I am not a guy who listens to country music enough to be considered a fan, but I am always willing to embrace a song that picks up on the old pickup truck vibe.

Recently, a song called “Truck Yeah” came across my music radar and I believe this song gets as close to the soul behind old trucks as any tune. The song is a hybrid of rock-style guitar licks and hell-raising country style anthem: “Truck Yeah” is the catchy operative chant in said anthem.

I agree–Truck Yeah-I do love old pickups, even before Tim McGraw told me I should love them. I don’t even need the song along with a dozen Buds to buy into the McGraw mantra because the old work-horses are still a classy set of wheels for me.

Think of how many movies have starred old pickups alongside human beings. The trucks tend to help us buy into the hardworking and honest lead character in the movie. The humans are usually unpretentious guys who are trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest and unscrupulous world.

That is the movie and song side of the equation and both may have romanticized the old truck, but there is really something special about the old trucks in their original form. They had claustrophobic cabs by comparison to today’s giant four door diesel behemoths and they rode like a frontier buckboard headed into Dodge City, but that was a large part of their charm.

The old trucks were built to work hard. They were not designed for long summer vacations or romantic moonlit drives; they were designed to haul bales, grain or livestock depending upon the time of year. There were no vacations for these blue collar four-wheeled heroes, just a life of hard work until they could work no more.

The old trucks also looked pretty cool. They wore the design features of their manufacturing years and they wore them with style. A lot of car guys have very fond memories of old pickup trucks, many because their father or grandfather owned an old truck.

They may have spent their childhood riding in old trucks with their fathers or grandfathers, or learning how to drive in one, and the old truck experience is now a sentimental journey to their pasts. That is how things work for old truck fans because the old pickups are a fond reminder of an uncomplicated part of their lives. Even the old trucks are simple by comparison.

The trucks had open windows for air-conditioning and a folding paper map for a GPS system. Many did not even have a radio and, if they did, it was an AM radio likely set on a local country music station that played George Jones, Faron Young and the daily livestock reports.

That is how things worked when these old  trucks were new and that is why we loved them so much then and why we still love them now. Truck Yeah.

Jim Sutherland

Like stories about old trucks? Take a look at this link to MSCC Star Truckin’

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We at MSCC get at least one plea a month from car guys who have been victimized by theft of their beloved old rides and we know the total theft numbers are absolutely staggering in their scope.

We have deep sympathy for the owners when some lowlife misfit has stolen much more than a set of wheels-they have stolen memories and dreams.

Most car guys have very strong reasons behind their ownership of old cars.

We discuss their reasons in every car and truck story on our site because the reasons are personal and unique to each owner.

He or she has invested time, money, heart and soul into a project that represents a fundamental part of their lives.

The vehicles are not simply a commodity to them; they are a time travel portal to a time and place in their lives when these vehicles made a lifetime impression. Some of the luckier car guys even own the actual vehicle from their younger years and they are very grateful for their good fortune.

Other car guys have finally found an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong personal car dream and the road to their dream often is very often not an easy route. Their childhood car dreams were followed by adult car dreams where real life responsibilities stood in the way of the long-standing car dream.

Eventually the sun, the moon and the stars align and the car guy achieves his or her dream of ownership. Better late than never when finally car guy gets to fulfill that car dream. These are the warm and fuzzy moments in car guys’ worlds.

Until a sub-human parasite steals that dream and sells it or parts it out on the black market. They have no remorse about their ability to destroy the lives and dreams of car guys because these scumbags were only programmed to bring misery to other peoples’ lives. To suck the joy and happiness out of others’ lives is their calling in life.

They have stolen more than a classic car or truck but that notion would never even enter into the equation for them. Some would argue their lowlife criminal actions are not really their fault because they have encountered difficulties during their lives and are not responsible for their actions.

Some would say we should blame society and not the thieves for their behavior because we live in an age where personal accountability seems to have gone the way of finned cars and vent windows.

We at MSCC consider this new age (where responsibility for one’s criminal behavior has been shifted away from the actual lowlife) to be one of the most misguided directions ever pursued in a do-gooder world where nobody is to blame for anything.

Somebody is to blame and our money is on the thieving rats that break into private garages to steal the property and dreams of their victims. A stolen car or truck means nothing more than a quick buck to them and they will steal them in a heartbeat, given any opportunity to grab somebody else’s property.

Eventually the car thieves will be caught, but they will not face the same rehabilitation techniques presented to horse thieves in the Old West.

Sure it was pretty harsh, but there were very few repeat offenders when it came to convicted horse thieves in the Wild West.

Jim Sutherland

For a look back at MSCC stolen vehicle alerts please follow this link.

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