Ah...but it's a critical part of this story my friend! Read on please! It will get really good!
What were the coolest cars in your high school parking lot? As I was doing the research for this article, I had a couple of real eye-opening, light-bulb moments!
First, growing up in the late 70's was actually pretty cool. What kind of cars were on the used car lots at that time? That's right, used muscle cars and their less powerful sibling look-a-likes! They were still cheap and very few people put any real value on them.
I actually had the opportunity to buy a '68 Plymouth GTX with a 440 that needed a little engine work for $400! I had a friend tell me that I could have his '69 Charger R/T 440 after he blew the engine in it if I would just come haul it off! I never got around to it! (dumb dee dumb dumb!)
Let's see, I bought a '66 Mustang coupe that needed the engine rebuilt for $50. I had a chance at a '72 Mach I fastback with a smashed quarter panel, if I would just haul it off. (nope, missed that one too!) Also missed a chance at a '65 Comet Caliente coupe with 289 and auto trans for a couple of hundred dollars.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
Instead of all of those, what do you think I got to drive to High School? That's right! My dad's hand-me-down 1969 Rambler Ambassador SST 4 door with it's magnificent 290 V-8 and automatic tranny!
My second epiphany... While there were less than 80 kids in my little country high school, among the lot of us, we had almost 25 cars and trucks that many people would either actually covet or at least think are pretty cool today! Back then, except for the very coolest of them, they were just used cars!
So let's continue the story here. I'll start with my ride first.
Now mind you my Ambassador was not just any old run-of-the-mill Rambler. It was special! My dad bought it new in '69 and when he drove it home the first thing we all noticed was the color. It had a light yellow body with a darkish green vinyl roof and a green interior! My mom almost wouldn't ride in it at first, but after a while it kind of grew on you...sort of like algae I guess!
When I got a hold of this bad boy, I jacked up the rear end with a set of Gabriel Hi-Jacker air shocks, Slapped on some custom wheels, cheap aluminum slots on the front, even cheaper (but wider) Chrome reverse steelies on the rear all wrapped up in the latest in recapped bias-ply tires (cheapest option). Incidentally, every time I'd take that puppy up anywhere near 100mph, those tires would heat up and throw the recaps off in the next few days!
I also threw on a set of genuine Thrush glass packs for a dual exhaust system that ended right behind the driver's seat, thereby completely negating the tunes from my awesome used Craig 8-track sound system! Then for the ultimate in personal touches I had my nickname, "The Monk", short for Monkey, boldly emblazoned across those pale yellow quarter panels in the latest 70's-style silver prismatic lettering!
Dude...I was stylin' in the ultimate Chick Magnet! It was awesome!
In case you haven't caught my tongue in cheek attitude here, you might understand my third epiphany even better. It happened many years after the demise of the "Monk-Mobile" when I was in college. That was when I found that the girl who would ultimately agree to be my wife, wasn't even remotely impressed by any car that I might have been driving, let alone my most awesome "Monk-Mobile"! She was far more interested in who I was rather than my material possessions!
So with that background as a perspective, you might get a kick out of seeing what some of the other kids got to park out in front of good ole San Simon High School! Many of them were actually still really nice cars. Some of them were beginning to show their age with faded paint and even some primer. But most all of them I would love to have in my garage today in their resurrected forms!
I'll start through them in a kind of chronological order according to the age of their owners.
I'll start out with a couple of older/younger brother combos. One of my classmates named Kevin had an older brother named Cliff who picked up a '69 AMC Rebel. Theirs was a pretty cool maroon color and I think it had a black vinyl top like the one above. It wasn't quite as fancy as this one with no hood scoops or spoiler. I think it had a slightly larger engine than my little 290. If I remember correctly they had the 390 in theirs making it a fairly hot little ride. When Cliff graduated a year or two ahead of Kevin and I, little brother inherited the car! Lucky guy! I'd love to have one today!
The next brother combo was Art and Ruben. When Art was a junior he was driving a pretty gold '68 or '69 Malibu. Unfortunately it was a 4 door. However when he showed up for his senior year he and Ruben had worked hard all summer and pooled their dimes to pick up a really awesome '72 Mustang Mach I fastback! It was a beautiful car and over the 3 or 4 years I was around it, it became one of my all time favorite muscle cars. This car went through several different iterations over the course of its career in our small town. When they bought it, it came in the factory yellow color with black graphics. After having it for a year they ran it down to Mexico and had it painted silver and black just like the one pictured above. That only lasted another year till Ruben finally inherited it for good, when after another run south of the border, it spent our senior year as a really pretty shade of burgundy, again with black Mach I striping. All it had was a little 302 V-8 in it but was still a fairly quick little car. As far as I can remember it started out with a nice set of slotted aluminum mags and ended up with a nice new set of Keystone Classics! Sweet ride! Unfortunately after we graduated it ended up getting sideways on a corner and slamming into a very solid fence post on the left rear quarter. Thus ended the life of one of my all time favorite cars. Knowing what I do today, I would gladly have picked it up and thrown a new quarter on it as well as another rear axle and put her back on the road!
One day one of the older kids named Bronc, who used to drive a beat up old '65 Chevy II 4 door, showed up with this really cool metallic blue dune buggy that looked almost exactly like the one above! He was an instant hit among all of the car guys around school. It was a sweet little ride. I don't think he kept it very long, probably because it wasn't all that practical. Never-the-less, I'd love to have one of my own for those warm summer evenings to cruise around town or out through the countryside!
In the grade just ahead of was a girl named Beth whose dad was the Ag teacher. Somehow she scored the first of four '66 Mustangs that showed up in our parking lot! Hers was white and if I am remembering correctly it had a black vinyl top. (not totally sure) Sweet ride in very good condition. It had the little 289 V-8 and automatic combo and although we didn't know its value back then, it would have been highly coveted today because of its "Pony" interior package. It was pretty well decked out.
As you will quickly start to recognize, for some reason, our school was a Mustang hotbed! All together there ended up being at least seven of them that I can think of including a brand new '79 coupe that I won't cover in this article. So Beth had a classmate named Armando who drove a pale yellow coupe like the one above that may actually have been a '65 now that I think about it. Like me, he wasn't exactly loaded and so he ended up with the little 6 cylinder/3 spd version. Still, I'd take any of those 'Stangs in this day and age and be thrilled with it!
Then came a couple of guys with some really cool old trucks! I think they were both '65's and Chevy's but that May not have been totally accurate. (Hey this was over 35 years ago, so give me a break!) A kid named Shirdie had a primered short bed step side with some white spoke wheels and a bit of a lowered front end.
His classmate named Tobe had the nicer one of the two. He had managed to find one that had been partially restored with a nice maroon and white paint job and some cool wheels on it. Either one of these would have been an awesome addition to my personal collection. In fact, probably my personal favorite pickup design of all time, even though I tend to be a Ford guy, would be a '65 Chevy wide box short bed! I'd love to have one to go with my '79 Ford!
Now before I get into the kids in my class, I'd better throw in another long term resident of the SSHS Hot Rod Row! One of the maintenance guys at the school who was also an alum from several years before my time was a guy named Fernie who was almost everybody's favorite school employee. Somewhere along the line he had picked up a '67 Fairlane with a 390 and automatic. Being older than the rest of us, he also possessed enough wisdom to never engage in any racing with the younger set, but I would guess that this would have been a fairly quick ride! His was dressed up with a set of chrome reversed wheels and baby moon hubcaps.
Now, outside of the brother duos that we have already mentioned that ended up in my class, we'll share a couple other of the cool rides that belonged to the class of '79!
Probably the single most collectible car out of all the cool ones at our school was Tony's '69 Dodge Charger R/T with a 440 Magnum 4 bbl and automatic transmission! It was an almost exact duplicate of the car in the picture above and it was in beautiful shape. It had a dark green vinyl interior that was in immaculate condition.
Originally I think it had the black bumblebee stripe around the trunk area, but after Ruben's Mach I came back from Mexico with one of its new paint jobs, arrangements were made for Tony's Charger to take a trip south of the border too. It came back in a slightly different shade of green with white panels coming out of the two scallops on the front edge of the doors. It seems like it may have lost its vinyl top at that time too.
He had a big fat set of tires on the rear with the tail "jacked up" with air shocks. I can't remember exactly what wheels he had on it. One night on the way home, the hood came unlatched and blew open on him which made a mess out of it. He ended up replacing it with a gold one from the wrecking yard that, as far as I can remember, never got painted before he finally blew the engine in it and it got parked out in his mom's back yard, never to see the road again. Sad tale!
I would have to say that probably #2 on my all time favorite muscle car list would be these Chargers! Oh to think that I just missed having this one in my collection!
This truck had an interesting story. It was actually a green and white one instead of silver and it was actually a great match for our school colors! There were two girls named Beth in our school and the one who was my age was the daughter of a successful farmer. When we were seniors, he bought her this brand new Ford pickup. I think it had a 302/automatic combination in it. It was a short box and, in combination with my dad's new green and silver long bed and another friend's gold and tan short box, this body style went right up to second or third place on my all time favorite truck list! More on my dad's later. For some reason, Beth wasn't much of a truck girl and after a few months they sold this one to another guy in my class named Ronnie and replaced it with a brand new Mercury Zephyr coupe, another pretty sweet ride.
After Tony blew the motor in his beautiful green Charger, he showed up a little while later with a gray primered '67 Camaro with a 283 and Powerglide automatic in it. I only got to ride in it once and I don't know what ultimately became of it. Again, another highly desirable pony car!
This wasn't your typical hot rod muscle car but does deserve honorable mention here. My buddy Terry's mom bought this brand new and it made a very respectable ride for a young high school kid at that time. His was gold with a tan vinyl top, but the coolest thing was that it had a whopping big 460 V-8 under the hood! A 1976 Ford Elite. Not the most common car even in our day and extremely rare today. It was kind of a high end touring car, pretty fancy for a Ford!
This is not a great picture, but is almost an exact duplicate of my dad's brand new '78 Ford F-150 except that his was a two wheel drive. I actually got to choose the color combination myself as we ordered it from the factory. It only had the 6 cylinder engine but came with one of the first overdrive pickup transmissions. This baby stayed in our family for a long time until my younger brother finally drove it into the ground many years later. Fun truck!
My friend Rod picked up a baby blue version of this truck at our school surplus sale. Most of us had driven it around the school farm many times and had some interesting adventures in it, but he was the lucky one who ended up with it. It would have made a sweet little project truck today with its 302 and 4 spd combo. I think I would change the color though!
Ah...this is one I had many adventures in! My buddy Max and I both lived about 35 miles from school and because we were both sports fanatics, we carpooled to school nearly every day for 4 years. One day in my yellow "Monk-Mobile" and the next in his hand-me-down '70 Ford Falcon. (The year before they started calling it a Torino)
His car had a 300 cu/in straight 6 and a 3 on the tree transmission! After a year or two of factory imposed un-coolness with the clunky column shifter, we installed a sweet Hurst floor shifter in it and it became instantly awesome!
We had more crazy adventures in this car. We raced it, spun cookies in it, jumped it, etc, etc, etc! the thing was almost bullet proof!
I grew to love its NASCAR inspired body style and would love to have a Torino Cobra version of it today.
Our classes first entry into the '66 Mustang club was Greg's powder blue, 289/automatic. It was in really nice condition. It had one really rare option that you seldom see today, a front bench seat! We thought that was kind of a rip-off because it didn't seem nearly as cool as factory bucket seats. His was "jacked up" with air shocks like all of the other cool rides of the day. He had some great wide tires on steel white spoke wheels on the back. Those little 289's were really fun little cars and those were just the Lo-Po 2bbl versions not the much hotter 4bbl ones. Again, I would love to have one of these! Actually, I did for a short time. I bought Greg's parts car, a little red coupe, and rebuilt the engine in it before I sold it.
We had another guy named Ronnie come and go for a few months and he had an interesting ride. At the time we thought it was a rather clunky little rice-burner family sedan. None of us had been exposed to the world of SCCA road racing at all, so nobody had any clue about the soon to become iconic Datsun 510 sports sedans. Ronnie's dad owned the Datsun dealership in one of the neighboring towns and had sent him along with his 510 to spend a couple of semesters at SSHS. It looked almost exactly like this one except for the fender mounted mirrors. If you have ever wondered about the reality of the handling capabilities of these cars, take my word for it, we took it out one day with three guys in it and actually tried to roll it over! (typical crazy teenagers, I know) But we literally couldn't do it! When I found out later how revered these things were as race cars, I was not at all surprised!
When we were seniors, one of our guys named Ray showed up one day with this ratty old '67 suicide doored T-Bird with air shocks and fat tires on the rear. With a Police Interceptor 428 and automatic under the hood it was deceptively fast and fun! A really cool old luxo-rod!
Next we moved on into the class just younger than us. When we were seniors, a junior named Ricky showed up with this really beautiful medium blue '70 Plymouth Satellite GTX. I think he
had either a 318, 340 or 360 small block in it with an automatic. I can't remember what wheels he had on it, but I think they were Keystone Classics. It was a really nice car and again I would love to have one of these in my collection.
When another junior named Don showed up with his first car, it was something that I had never seen before. While I loved Tony's 69 Charger and even some of the 73-76 versions, I had never seen one of the original '67's. His was a pretty old beater with stock wheels and sagging rear springs, so it wasn't exactly the most beautiful ancestor of the later models. However, it had one saving grace! It had one of those monster 440 4bbl engines under the hood! Could be way cool if you fixed it up like this one and it was the same color!
Don's Charger didn't stick around very long. I actually don't remember what happened to it. But a few months later he showed up in the SSHS parking lot with this medium green '71 AMC Javelin. Again I don't remember much about it but it seems like it did have their top of the line 401 V-8 in it and was probably an automatic. We actually had very few manual transmissioned rides around our parking lot for some reason or another. Maybe the wisdom of some concerned parents??? I'm not sure how long this one was around either, but again, having a soft spot in my heart for AMC's, you could give me one of these any day of the week!
Remember Cliff and Kevin and their AMC Rebel? Well they had a younger sister named Teresa and she had scored a great ride too. She had found a really nice white with black vinyl top '67 Mustang coupe. Hers had, I believe, a 390 V-8 and automatic combo in it, making it a fairly desirable candidate on today's collector's lists.
This one had a fun story with a sad ending. One of the juniors named Pancho showed up one day with this unusually tiny little British sports car. I had never seen one before, but he called it an Austin Healey Sprite. He only had it for about 2 days, when he and I were standing around out in the parking lot admiring it. He asks me, "Do you want to go for a spin in it?" What do you think I reply? "Of course!"
So off we go. We drive it 2 miles down the road, turn around and head back to the school. Wanting to impress me with its handling capabilities, Panch comes back into the parking lot a little faster than normal and cranks the wheel hard around to come whipping into position next to the other cars in the line. Only one problem...he forgot that our parking lot was graveled not paved! As he hit that gravel going a little too fast he lost control and slid right into the side of......you can probably guess......The Monk-Mobile!
For his poor Sprite it was the end of the road. The Monk-Mobile...? It lived to soldier on again with a new door and some fresh yellow paint!
The funny thing was that, that one little 4 mile ride started me on a life long love affair with those tiny little British sports cars! I've had several of them!
This is one that I think only made one or two appearances at SSHS. But for several years Leebo's '61 T-Bird sat right down the street at his Grandmother's gas station awaiting the funds to get it back on the road permanently. I think it ended up taking a back seat to his dirt bike obsession which ultimately landed him in traction in the hospital for several months! His was actually the same color as this one and had this really cool swing away steering column and swiveling bucket seats! Super high tech in its day! Yep I'd like one in my garage! But I think I would resto-mod it! Lose the wheel pants, raise the rear, lower the front, wide tires, aluminum wheels, big engine, you get the picture!
Then there was sophomore Travis' '73(?) Charger that he inherited from his dad along with his driver's license. It was a beautiful car in a lighter shade of green than this one but with the white vinyl top and window slats. Starting with the '68's and running through the end of this body style, I'd be thrilled to have any of them. I think they are some of the most beautifully designed cars of all time!
Yeah there were probably actually a few others in that parking lot that I would have enjoyed given the chance like the VW Bug belonging to the history teacher or an early Dodge Dart convertible. But it ended up killing its owner.
So you can see that if I just decided to duplicate Hot Rod Row at good ole SSHS, that I could actually end up with a pretty awesome car collection! Obviously I would probably do some serious hot rodding on some of them, but others would be great just the way they were!
And yes, I actually wouldn't mind having the old "Monk-Mobile" back. Let's see...different paint scheme, upgrade to a 401/Automatic combo, slap on some awesome custom wheels and tires that wouldn't mind the high side of 100 mph, full length dual exhaust all the way to the back and a killer sound system. Hey today, it's not totally uncool to drive a 4-door! We actually had a ton of fun in that car!
So again, what were the really cool cars in your High School parking lot? Hope you enjoyed as I remembered mine!
