From $1900 to A Million Dollars For a 1971 Hemi 'Cuda coupe

oh yeah that's all I know that's all I'll do I just don't know anything else know him a CUDA yeah this is a million dollars million dollars for this car 2016 Mecum auctions but back in the day Frank battle s'en paid 1900 for it he was a junior in college he dragged raised it he drove across country and today he is the Mopar survival specialist of the world my very first car was a 318 - Barracuda my father's buddy had a used car line in Woodbridge Virginia so that summer I got back from military school it was May of 71 and my father said you're going to work you're not going to be messing around this summer you've got to go to work I got you a job I said ok so but you got to drive to DCI he got me a job with congressman Anderson in Washington DC working in the cannon house office building so he said you got to have a car because I'm not driving you to Washington everyday so we went to Vince's a lot there were two Mopar sitting there 70 Hemi challenger f4 green with a shaker then a yellow 7318 barracuda of course I knew what this stuff was I went in I asked Vince can I have the keys to the Hemi challenger and he gave them to me I went out I started it up I would say I said oh man this would be great if I could swing this 1970 Hemi Cuda automatic super trackpad original paint original interior 700 miles original tires are still on most of the original exhaust is still only the original belts hoses clamp I have the original air filter this of course is not it but we have it it's in the other shelf we can easily put it on but as you can see this original battery cables what does the car doing at your restoration facility thing we were going to put an original h-pipe on it and we did a few minor repairs okay so that's to bring it to survivor for a survivor driver that's right for the survivor work right now the other thing is the interior this car is absolutely gorgeous and another pretty unique thing which they did it ham tramp Hamtramck only Hamtramck assembly you can see if the build sheet has never been taken out from behind the glovebox you can so I told Vince this is what I want and so apparently I went back outside messing with the car checking it out making sure it was original nothing fooled with so my father came storming out in a couple of minutes and he started cursing and say dog you ain't getting that car Vince says it goes 200 miles an hour and gets 4 miles per gallon you're not getting that car ok so we're gonna take this thing for a spin we're gonna take an original 7,000 mile Hemi Cuda first spin it's a unique experience I assure you okay go ahead okay we're gonna be starting a 1970 Hemi Cuda 426 Hemi with hydraulic lifter camshaft 410 super Track Pack rear that powered up real easy supposed to where all these myths come from that Hemis are aren't really tough to start running all right what are the - oh I I heard that back in the seventies I said well not Vince doesn't know what he's talking about this thing doesn't get four miles per gallon it won't go 200 no he'll know you were not getting that good and every Hemme I was over around every hemi i ever owned my first temp 71 Hemi Cuda this thing ran like a pussycat you pull the choke you turn the key and it starts all you got to do is keep it in tune and don't monkey with I was a kid then I was just in the cars and uh I was drawn to Mopars in 68 when the roadrunner came out and then my buddy's older buddies started buying them and we started going by the dealership all the time looking at them and that's just where it grew I have a full I have a full body shot we do full ground-up restorations uh uh it's not here the body shop is not here its off-site not a 14,000 square foot full body shop we've got full restorations going there which I have an engine shop but my specialty my preference my specialty is survivor that's that's what I maintain as my specialty we do great restorations everything receives the same amount of detail as any survivor if the customer is willing to go along but but we are known for survivors which is why there are so many survivors here and here at the shop and even down at the at the body shop that's an 1,800 mile original survivor right there that car was with the original owner until December of 15 and that's a what a 70 71 Hemi challenger hundred 1800 not original miles just one of 59 actually because they just want specialized repairs a survivor will come in and say I just want to do the trunk so we'll take it in and we'll do the trunk or will repair the metal behind the wheel wells and blend the paint in and make it look original and and make sure that it's three to four mils thick or two and a half mil stick depending on the car in the paint so that's what we do with the survivors then full restorations we go down to the body shop you're gonna see there's several there so this room is mainly this is where you restore cars here well this is where I do all the most all the mechanicals yes okay see the two lifts so we got the two lifts here we got to drive on and then we got the two pose and then I've got all my tools presses you know we got our compressor those are rebuilt leaf springs we've already done ready for cars about April of 73 when I met a friend of mine guy Spiller who's still around town today and we're still buddies he had advertising the local trading post to 70 Hemi Cuda so I sold the brown 73 340 roadrunner and then I started going to guy Spillers house and checking out the Hemi Cuda and he let me drive it I worked on a little bit straightened out a few things and and we basically made a deal I think it was for $2,500 so I had told my father and he was mad because I sold the roadrunner the 73 so I told my father we found I found something else and he said well I'm gonna come down and look at you walked around it and he saw Hemi Cuda on the shaker and so he looked at that and staring at it he said Hema CUDA what the hell is him a CUDA and I said that doesn't mean anything don't don't even worry about that it is it's nothing he said uh notice this is this is that Hemi again you're not getting this car you're not gonna get this car so I had the roadrunner for that summer of 73 and then took it back to college had that sophomore year and then through the summer after sophomore year and the first half of junior year then I sold it and then I bought the silver 71 Hemi Cuda ran beautifully I got sixteen seventeen miles per gallon on that trip to California I can show you I've got all the records we kept records of every gas stop and all a mileage from that trip this is one of my many volumes of engine and numbers traces see I started doing this back in 1976 when I first became a cop and we had a class taught by the FBI and it's centered around motorcycle Harley Davidson motorcycle fraud and they taught us how to get these engine numbers and frame numbers off of Harley's and that sparked me into thinking man all these mo parts that I've had my hands on I need to start checking them and make sure all that that is right so I just started doing it so I've got over 40 years worth of this kind of thing numbers off of mostly all high performance I never did anything off of 318 but just doll sort of different engine numbers trans numbers and body numbers I started doing this just on my own never thinking it's gonna be anything never thinking I'm gonna make money on it never thinking it's gonna go anywhere I did it for my own interest and I did it for my own education and I did it for myself to make sure that I don't get taken in any sort of fraud so here we are 40 years later this has all become important and the point of the whole thing is someone says oh yeah I can check numbers I know how to do that on but if you didn't start a long time ago it's gonna be very difficult to I have amassed all of this information that shows you what went on at different times on the assembly line what cars had to have hand stamps if they were hand stamps what are a cent ik Chrysler hand stamps supposed to look like what period on the line did they do this kind of thing so this having this amount of information is what helps me authenticate cars and that's another large part of my business is I do authenticate drive trains and cars so this helps me a great deal with that and by having all of this we also know all the anomalies that the factory was involved in and then 91 I left with a couple of us started our own accident investigation business we we were expert witnesses in court for accident investigation cases yeah so how long did it take you to get in the restoration business and what happened well the restoration business just sort of morphed from working on on the cars and and and then working on friends cars and then you know we started sort of getting known and you know doing some judging and and now we're going back to the eighties and so I was still working full time but doing this kind of thing part-time and still had the accident reconstruction business so that just you know that that just progressed for for you know 10 15 years and it it got busier and busier in about 2008 I just got sort of burnt out on the legal system I had enough of lawyers and depositions and and this business was really growing so play then I just said that's fine I'm I'm gonna retire from that and I'm just gonna do cars full time well this is our parts room and this is a very small display of the nos that I have these are original tires dated 1969 they're there for 812 cars this is just you bring them back here same thing back here everything here is Nos there's nothing reproduction back here I had plenty a part-time business prior to that that was almost a second full-time job so you didn't keep any cars from the old days any hammies oh no I always bought and sold I liked everything I've owned I've lost count now but it's over well over 90 mo cars that I eventually I've had a little bit of everything oh one thing I've never had two convertible Hemi but other than that I've had pretty much anything you could name some guess Roger Gibson and I hooked up around the late eighties we became friends through a tech article that he wrote in a magazine that's how we actually became friends and connected so we've he and I have been in business we started the parts business around 92 so it's been well over 25 years for the parts business and and he and I have helped each other and restoration the restoration work techniques we've developed Rogers restoration business is Roger Gipson auto restoration my restoration business is American performance and our parts business is auto restoration parts supply all Mopar yeah that's all I know that's all I'll do I just don't know anything else oh so what are we gonna do here we you know we're not gonna wrap it up to higher rpm so we're just gonna drive it down the road we're gonna take an easy stroll down to a good spot to take some pictures in this car low low mileage original nothing changed on it right that's right yeah have you seen a better looking car really it's hard to beat man especially with that rubber bumper this thing is killer this is going to be a 69 Hemi super V it's an all-stock motor stock cam stop hemming stock ID look again it's a direct-drive starter that they used in 69 it's also a super Track Pack car and we're going to be shifting in about 3500 that's a direct-drive starter 69 direct drive stuff [Music] you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Jerry Heasley

Views: 250,403

Rating: 4.6919374 out of 5

Keywords: Million Dollar Hemi 'Cuda, Not A Barn Find

Id: pJzvXe3jB5I

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 25 2018