A big part of our Valentine’s Day Wedding Car sales pitch to women is obvious-the wedding car. This particular story was in our first edition back in April 2009 and it was dumb luck- not good planning on our part.
The 1940 Dodge has been a wedding car twice plus it’s a monster street car-classic romance story combined with brute force.
Beauty and the beast…classic Hollywood stuff.
Ladies-be prepared to dry your eyes.
Here’s the original text from 2009.
“Tim is a hands-on guy.
He is one of those rare naturally talented guys that most of us aren’t. 12 years ago Tim decided that he wanted to take on a street and strip car project. It came with two conditions: one, it had to be 100% Chrysler. That was Tim’s condition. The second was his wife’s condition…
The car had to be able to comfortably haul the kids so Tim was faced with the daunting prospect of building a 12 second soccer mom car. Try building a car to haul around the Walton family in comfort and still make it incredibly fast.
One more thing-the car had to be built on a strict budget that gave priority to things like schoolbooks over a new big block motor. Tim found the perfect car-a 1940 Dodge 4 door sedan. Lots of rear seat room for the kids and lots of room under the hood for a giant 458 cubic inch Mopar monster motor. He kept it fairly sedate looking to sell his wife on the functional suburban family hauler idea.
That plus the thousands and thousands of dollars Tim saved by doing virtually all of the work on the car convinced his wife that the car was a pretty good idea. He caved in on the paint job-sometimes you have to call a pro to get that perfect look. But overall Tim pulled this classic project off simply because he was patient, talented and willing to wait until he could afford a part here and a part there.
The family came first but a few years ago Tim debuted the car at a show and then the drag strip. You might wonder how the car did after years of building. Simple answer? Tim does a 12 second 109 mph quarter mile and hauls the family to as many shows as he can. In fact the car is such a part of the family it was the wedding car for his son and his new bride-no; they weren’t late for any of the ceremonies. Tim still works within that automotive budget.
Driving the thirsty Dodge in the summer of 2008 was less frequent simply because a tank of gas cost the equivalent of a mortgage payment. The hi-test stuff that Tim runs cost three mortgage payments per tank. That just goes to prove that car guys with families are always sticking to a budget-even after the car is done”.
The car is a veteran of two family weddings and many other events as Tim’s wife Nancy explained, “We’ve used the Dodge in two of our children’s weddings. Our son James Anderson was married to Nicky Majak on June 14, 2008 . We’ve used it as special transportation for the kid’s graduations as well as the weddings. It’s a unique form of transportation that not many people have the opportunity of using and we feel privileged to be able to have it and use it”.
Last June the sensible street machine was invited to its second wedding and it was a big hit. Nancy added some detail to the event ” This past summer, our daughter, Katelyn Anderson was married to Jeff Young on June 5, 2010. They again used the 1940 Dodge as their wedding vehicle”.
We have to delve into the color scheme (brides thrive on that) so the theme was purple-the 1940 Dodge was complemented by a new purple Dodge Challenger.
The cars looked great, the wedding party looked great-in fact the only glitch came when Tim wanted to do a celebratory 1940 Dodge burnout (against his wife Nancy’s better judgment) when he left the church with the happy couple in the back of the car.
Unfortunately the car bucked a little at that job( Tim was more upset that the smoke show didn’t come off as planned so we’ve included a shot of Tim’s car from our archives that demonstrates what an insane amount of horsepower can do to a set of tires).
As for the bride that day-Tim’s daughter grew up in a car guy family so that didn’t even come close to being an issue.
Two weddings and a 12 second wedding car- suddenly a day dedicated to flowers and chocolates like Valentine’s Day makes sense to car guys.
Happy Valentine’s Day
Jerry Sutherland
FOR MORE WEDDING CAR STORIES PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK
https://www.mystarcollectorcar.com/2-features/special-features.html
