WHAT A CRATE CAR!
Well, its really less of a crate; more like a cage for an elephant.
What we have here is a 1967 Belvedere POST car which actually is pretty
rare in itself. No, its not a crate motor but instead a correct for 67 Barton
-built STROKER!
The story of how it came to be what you see here most definitely falls
into the oddest of the Mopar oddities!
As you probably know we do full-on concours restorations. Little known is
that we also do a ton of what we call, MAIL-ORDER COMPONENT-RESTORATION. What
that means is folks send us their old crusty parts, (through our parts
department) and enjoy the same quality restoration work our shop offers on
entire cars. The parts return ready to use just as if we were installing them
in one of our high-end restorations. In most cases we do grilles, tailpanels,
alternators and starters, power brake units and such, but this time was a little different.
A customer in Texas took things a little to the extreme! He owns a 1967
GTX Hemi car and rather than wait on our two-year full-restoration list,
Frank Parli took matters into his own hands. Basically, he found a shop in
Texas that could handle the body and paint work. Capable of turning out the
quality Frank desired but mostly a Mustang shop, the Texans were a little
confused over the particulars of a true Hemi Mopar restoration. So what did
he do? He dropped off the body shell in Texas and shipped EVERYTHING else
North, to Totally Auto, (Feasterville, Pa.) for the royal treatment.
As work progressed we started the nightmare of how to ship all this
stuff, some 70,000 pieces, to Texas without damage. It all started with the
dash; its a restored GTX unit with many new parts including a mint red dash
pad, restored cluster, NOS dash mounted clock, well, you get the idea! One
afternoon Totally Auto owner, Dave Ferro exclaimed, Man it would be a lot
easier to just put all this in a car and have the car transported to Texas.
Hey, the dash would be safe, and a bonus; The mustang guys would get a
working example of where all the nuts and bolts go. The dash for example;
pull out the bolts, swing the unit into the painted up GTX and bolt it down
using that same hardware. A full scale model, if you will.
In one of our parts-car yards was the Belvedere you see here and well, a
picture tells a thousands words!
Component Restoration to the second POWER!