One that didn’t get away!  I ordered my Charger while out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean October 1966.
I was on my way back to the States from the Vietnam campaign on board USS COONTZ DLG9. I realized that I would be getting out of the Navy in January 1967 and had to move fast, so I sent my brother a letter requesting new car information for 1967. When I saw that red 1967 Dodge Charger, I knew that was the car for me.
I sent him the down payment, and the car was waiting for me when I got home on January 13 1967. She was in the show room window of Bick Long Motors. I came with a 383 4BBL engine and they tried to sweeten the pot by offering me a set of floor mats. I convinced them that it had to be a AM/FM radio to sweeten the deal, so I am one of the fortunate ones that got that dealer installed option.
Wedding pictures with the Charger of June 14 1970. Still have the car and still have the wife 🙂
I got married using the car as transportation on June 14, 1970 along with using the car in my work at IBM in Greensboro, N.C.  I gave the car to my wife in 1971, and I purchased a 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger with air condition. The wife drove the car until 1982, and she convinced me to park the car out by the cow pasture fence because it was just another old car that wasn’t worth a hill of beans. The car sat by the fence weathering away until 2000.  IBM downsized me in 1993 and I sat around the house for 7 years, watching Jenny Jones, Oprah, and Bob Barker and taking naps, and just weathering away my life until the wife crawled me “When You going to get off your butt and do something around here?”
“Like what, was my reply?” “Why don’t your restore that car back there?”  “I don’t have the money for that project,” She told me; “If you restore it, I’ll pay for it,” She said the magic words, so I started the restoration and by 2001 it was finished.  The car was a basket case, but I knew how it was suppose to be done, and I was cracking the whip and it was restored in 10 months.  I discovered that classic car people, are the cream of the crop when it comes to being nice and for some reason they all come from the same mold of decency.
The car has been in numerous magazines from the exposure of a Ray Evernham photo shoot along with Kasey Kahne’s #9 Charger in an advertising click with MSD Electronic Ignitions.
The Old Charger was serviced by Willard Milo Sox at his Sinclair station in Burlington, N.C.  Mr. Sox is Ronnie Sox’s Dad, and everyone knows Ronnie as 5 time World drag racing Champion. Herb McCandless was instrumental in helping with the restoration of the car, and today she sits tall and I must say is better than the day I bought the car.
It sports an 8-track tape player and that 8 track has been in the car and still plays since the first week I owned the car.  I have of course replaced the drive belt several times.  It is now the sweetest car I have ever owned, and is appraised at $80,000.00 which is just numbers that have no meaning.
I have already told my little girl who is now 34, that the car will be left to her when I should no longer be driving. So someday, maybe my grandson will be showing the car off at car shows and cruise-ins.
Don R Dodson