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AMERICAN
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When
mom talked dad into leaving his first love the Police Department, and for a
while, he sold cars, but dad was the kiss of death for car
companies; after DeSoto folded he moved on to sell Edsels. But it was
great for me; I got to drive a lot of cool, if not strange looking cars. Anyway,
the Adventurer was an awesome ride for a 16 year old and in the vernacular
of today, a definite chick magnet! Dad, ever the good sport, let me take
it on a couple of dates. There were only 1650 of the coupes made and dad
had one of them. The convertibles were even more rare as they only made
300 of them! But I was happy with the coupe. It was White with Gold trim
and coves. It had a 345hp hemi engine with two 4-barrel carbs and a ¾ race
cam, at least that was what I was told, I don’t think the 2x4bbls and
the cam were factory options. When it was sitting and idling it sounded
like it was missing a piston, chunka, chunka, chunks. It had an Auto tranny and Pushbutton
shifter, PS, PW, AC, and a cloth & vinyl interior. One thing that I
learned early on was that flooring it was expensive, the car was too light
for the power and fishtailed fairly easy, and when flooring it, the gas
gauge went down so quickly it was actually noticeable! The speedometer had
160 MPH on it and when one night on a quite road at the edge of the city,
I buried the speedometer needle below the 160mph mark, I was timed at only
142 mph by the local gendarmes, I was disappointed and would have probably
landed in jail if it weren’t for the fact the dad had been a cop
and eventually went back to the force. The cop that stopped me didn’t
put me in jail, he was dad’s ex-partner from the days when the cops rode
two to a car, (One of the few benefits afforded the police) but he did
tell my dad and that was the last time dad ever brought the Adventurer
home. I always thought that I must have been that cop’s biggest fish
story of the one that got away! The next demo he brought home was an BMW
Isetta…but that’s another story. Copyright 2005 KL Nichols |
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