Fans of YouTube’s ‘Cold War Motors’ already know MyStarCollectorCar has featured many owner’s stories from the CWM channel.
Here’s another one.
Myles Allen is the proud owner of this 1966 Plymouth Sport Fury—veteran Cold War fans will recognize this car from several episodes.
Jerry Sutherland
Myles bought this car 22 years ago when he was looking for a project. He said he was brand new to the car project world, so this forlorn looking ’66 Sport Fury called his name—for 750 bucks.
Myles admitted he was brand new to the car project world, so he wasn’t phased by how bad this Fury was. It was sitting in a swamp, but that didn’t deter Myles because he said he, “Didn’t know any better”.
There were other problems. The factory 383 big block was locked tighter than Fort Knox, but it didn’t slow down a young Myles. Instead, he enlisted the aid of his auto-tech brother-in law and tore the engine down.
The upside was the Plymouth was–as Myles called it, “completely unmolested”, so he didn’t have a long list of expensive trim parts to track down. Myles is an optimistic guy by nature, so that attitude carried him through this massive project.
This car was a basket case—Myles said you could throw a volleyball through a quarter panel, but he focused on the power train. His brother-in-law was a huge asset during this process because this was a full-scale rebuild. Myles said he bribed him with lunches to keep him interested.
The next stage was cleaning up the engine compartment because Myles wanted a nice home for the newly built 383. There’s no better time to do that when the engine was missing.
Myles made the Sport Fury a driver within five years, but he knew he had to take it to the next level. He said he struck gold when he met Scott Newstead—the man behind ‘Cold War Motors’.
Scott gave him great advice about how to map out this massive job. Myles took on most of the nasty stuff like sandblasting and did many of the welds, but Scott was there for the tricky parts. Myles said he’d look at his own nasty welds, then watch Scott lay down the perfect bead—it was very humbling and educational at the same time.
There wasn’t much original metal left on this Sport Fury after the long process to replace it. New floors, quarters, trunk floors, inner and outer rockers were part of the game plan. Myles did what he could, but Scott did all the technically difficult frame rail work.
Myles said Scott was a coach too, because anytime he let the Plymouth sit, Scott asked him about it. That was useful because there were times when Myles felt like waving a white flag on the project.
He had another project—a Dodge Coronet—plus he was moving on in life, so the Plymouth went into long storage.
Despite that, Myles spent 8-10 years on and off the Fury project. He did the interior and finished the car with some insanely long days to prep it for paint. Scott (and several Cold War agents) pushed the car over the finish line and Myles had it back together in two weeks.
Myles is older and wiser now. He said he would never take one on that’s such a mess to start with, but he’s happy with the huge learning curve from his ’66 Sport Fury project.
There are still things left to do because that’s the same orbit every project has, but right now Myles is enjoying his ’66 Sport Fury by putting thousands of miles on it.
It’s a road warrior—that’s makes it a MyStar hero car.
Jerry Sutherland
By: Jerry Sutherland
Jerry Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer with a primary focus on the collector car hobby. His work has been published in many outlets and publications, including the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Saskatoon StarPhoenix, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and The Truth About Cars. He is also a regular contributor to Auto Roundup Publications.
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