Mopar Muscle Association UK

Back in 2013 I was asked if I would to travel to Canada to look at some cars at a restoration shop there, this turned into quite an adventure. The owner of the cars involved was concerned at the lack of progress being made so it was decided that two of us would go there to find out what was going on. In November 2013 I boarded a plane along with my good friend James for the flight to Toronto. Before we left England we discussed the possibility of removing the cars from the shop should the need arise. With this in mind we got in touch with a company in Toronto, TFX International who could collect the cars and more importantly store them if necessary. When we arrived in Toronto we collected our hire car and drove straight to TFX who were fairly close to the airport to discuss how this might all work out. They turned out to be extremely helpful and professional and were used to moving multiple vehicles so were basically put on standby. We left TFX and drove to our hotel overlooking Lake Ontario with a view to driving to the restoration shop in Caledon the following morning. The shops owner (no names necessary) knew we were coming so after breakfast we drove the forty miles or so to meet him. The business consisted of a large workshop and a paint booth in the grounds of his house and it soon became clear that he had made no preparations for our arrival. The cars in question clearly hadn’t moved for sometime and were in various states of disrepair, none of them were running and with dead batteries and stale fuel in the tanks. It was also obvious that some of them had spent considerable time outside in the unforgiving Canadian climate prior to being moved undercover. This was particularly galling as the cars were all running when purchased and in a couple of cases in pretty good order.Here are a few photos to be getting on with before continuing with the story.

The cars in question were in no particular order, 70 T/A Challenger, 68 Coronet convertible R/T, 70 Charger 440 6 pack, 69 A12 Roadrunner, 68 Hemi GTX convertible, 71 Cuda restomod and finally a mysterious missing 70 Hemi Cuda.
To be continued

More please sounds fascinating already

Outstanding, Martin, pray continue.....

My last work trip was to a crisp factory in Leicester.....

Come on martin, we need more.

We spent the morning photographing the cars and discussing with the shop owner what progress had been made over the previous year or two. It became clear he was hopelessly out of his depth as he was pretty much a one man operation and there was years of work in the cars. The only car in good order was the Hemi GTX Convertible which was parked in the paint booth. As far as we could tell no progress had been made on any of the cars and in fact they had suffered badly whilst in his possession. Looking back I feel he was in some sort of denial and wasn’t anticipating anyone coming over to check on his progress. Around lunchtime we had seen enough and headed back to the hotel to phone the owner of the cars and see what he wanted to do. As you can imagine he wasn’t very happy and decided he wanted all the cars out of there immediately. This meant another trip to TFX to put a plan in action. They could get a truck and some handlers there in two days time to collect the cars and get them to their large storage unit. The only issue would be getting the cars from the shop to the truck as the building was at the top of a long steep drive and owing to its size the truck would have to park further down the road for loading. On a recommendation we found a local guy with a small flatbed truck who could load the cars individually at the top of the drive and deliver them to the large truck which would be parked down the road. So a plan was in place, we just had to break the news to the shop owner. The following morning we drove back to Caledon where I broke the news that the cars were to be removed. “When is this liable to happen” was his response, tomorrow 10.00am was the reply. I think this left him a little shell shocked to say the least. We left Caledon to prepare for the next day and now having some free time we decided on a trip to the Niagara Falls for a bit of R and R.
Next instalment, day four moving the cars, photos to follow.

More more

Wow,
Fascinating,
Let’s see how the story unfolds.

Dont keep us in suspenders!

Keep it coming Martin, this is great stuff.

So the day of the move was here and like a well oiled machine everyone was in place for 10.00 am. Dave was there with his flatbed truck and the team from TFX were in place parked down the road. We pushed the cars outside ready to load them up one at a time on to Dave’s truck. First up was the A12 Roadrunner followed by the Coronet R/T, Charger six pack, the T/A and finally the GTX. As you can see we loaded them on to the flatbed backwards making it straight forward to push them off, and onto the TFX truck down the road. Everything was done and dusted by early afternoon and the five cars were on their way to the storage unit. There were still three more cars to consider, the 71 Cuda restomod which was not moveable, a 70 Barracuda Convertible project (more on that later) and finally the missing and mysterious 70 Hemi Cuda. Each of the cars deserve a story of their own and we needed to decide on the best way forward now that five of the cars were away from the restoration shop.
More to follow.

Martin, this is great, please keep it coming, a story on each one would be great.