CARL AND SHARON PEDERSON'S HEMI GTX

Text and photos by Carl Pederson

I recently turned 80 years of age. In all of my life, I have been the lone ranger in that I always was a street kid running around Spokane, Washington with a bunch of buddies that drove Chevys and Fords. I was always the kid with some sort of Mopar. My dad was a Chrysler guy. Always had a DeSoto or Chrysler.

I graduated from high school in Spokane in 1963. A short time following graduation I enlisted in the Air Force and shipped off to basic training in Amarillo, Texas. Following basic, I was stationed at Geiger Field Air Force Base in Airway Heights, Washington. In my absence away to basic training, my older brother bought a new 1964 Plymouth Sport Fury with the 426 Street Wedge and a four-speed. When I got back, I fell in love with that car. So I made a deal with him and bought that car from him. That was one of my all-time favorite Mopars. It was fast, and, if I do say so myself, I could power shift that four-speed with the ease and grace that would make Ronnie Sox envious.

In the spring of 1966, one of the guys in my Air Force unit (his parents owned a Chrysler dealership in Tekoa, Washington) told me that his dad had heard that Chrysler had sent a letter to dealers telling them that they (Chrysler) was going to bring out a special model for 1967 in the Plymouth line called GTX. Well, that set the hook. I could hardly wait until fall when the new car intro's would be announced at the dealerships. I sold my '64 Sport Fury that summer so I would have some cash to order my new 1967 GTX.

In those days, new car intro's were always announced in September. I was ready. I had always liked silver paint jobs and the Buffed Silver Metallic paint was also on the want list. And, of course, the vinyl top. Those were really cool. From laying on my back in my dad's driveway, I had gotten tired of replacing clutches in the '64, so I opted for the automatic transmission. I like tinted glass, so that box was checked. The only power option box checked was for the HEMI!! There was no hesitation on my part. DONE!!

Then the countdown started. My car was built during the third week of October in 1966. At that time, all Hemi cars were assembled at the St Louis facility. In early November I received the shipping notice that the car was on its way. Around Thanksgiving, the car was delivered. I was so excited. The Polaroid picture here that was taken in Spokane was shot at my family's home a few days following delivery.

So now I had what at that time was the one and only Hemi car in Spokane. And that being that I was a wild and crazy kid, I became a notorious prowler on the streets of Spokane. Any time at any place was the beacon call. Never a challenge unmet. At that time, tire technology was primitive, but there was a recapper in Spokane that did sawdust snow tires and after some talk with him, I had him recap some oversized tires into what could be described as a crude set of "cheater slicks," They were good and gummy and served the purpose for some marginal improvement with traction.

At that time, I was engaged to my high school sweetheart Sharon Bell. We had plans to marry in December of 1966. When we married, the GTX was our "family car."

Things didn't go all that smooth with the new GTX. There was a major problem that arose in early 1967. My mother had signed for me to get the loan for the GTX. And the bank needed an insurance policy for the car. At that time, all I can say is that I was less than truthful about my driving record. I had, in fact, set an all-time record for traffic citations in Spokane. I was on a first-name basis with many of the street cops. I received three separate violations by three different motorcycle cops on the same day. Not bragging, or complaining, but it might be a record that still stands to this day! Speeding. Exhibition of speed. Reckless driving. Those were just a few of my awards.

The long communication arm of insurance and traffic citations in those days took some time to finally cross paths in the spring of 1967. At that time, in order to keep the car, we had to change the registration to Sharon's name and take me off the policy. Damn. That hurt!! But, as always, I still managed to get some time behind the wheel. Sharon worked as a data entry clerk for IBM and I was working part time at a Chevron gas station.

When we could afford it, we took a few trips in the GTX. A couple times to Seattle to visit my older brother. Other brief trips around the area going to the lake and, of course, spending a fair amount of time at the Deer Park drag strip north of Spokane.

It was late in 1967 or early 1968 that an officer at Fairchild AFB, who had always had a fancy for the GTX, asked me if I was interested in selling. It was that "come to Jesus" moment in every Hemi owner's life. What to do? The insurance on the car was high and gas prices were starting to go up, so I came to the reality that the GTX needed to go. I reluctantly sold it to that Air Force Captain.

The Captain owned the car for the relative short time when he was notified of a transfer and he decided to sell the car. This was when things go blurry in the life of the Ol' Gray Elephant. It knocked around Spokane and changed hands a number of times. Finally a friend of mine who was into drag boat racing, contacted the guy that currently owned the GTX and convinced him to sell the engine out of the car. In exchange, my friend took out the Hemi and put in a 440. Never was told as to what monies exchanged on the deal. But the car was now still intact except for the engine which was put into a Sanger flat bottom drag boat. The sad ending is that the engine was blown up in a drag boat race and what ever happened to the hulk I was never told.

So the car was likely on its fifth or sixth owner. It was then sold to a guy who lived in Salt Lake City. He took the car to SLC. I know this information is correct because I still have a communication with him. He told me that he paid $1,500 for it. Some time later, he sold it to another guy who, for some strange reason, decided to paint it bright red. Of course, the silver paint job was fading and was in terrible disa

Now we must fast forward several years. I had been hired in the early '80s by Magnavox Electronics and was a territorial rep. About 1985, Sharon and I, along with our two children, were transferred from Spokane to the Bay Area in California. From that office, I was assigned to the Central Valley office located in Fresno.

This is where things get interesting. Our son was accepted for a scholarship at Cal Poly in San Louis Obispo in the late 1980s. And while we were rooting through boxes and files trying to find his birth certificate, fate would have it that I came across an old folder that had all of the original papers of when I had ordered and bought the GTX. WHAT?!! How could that be that all of that stuff was collected up by the movers and packers and had been put in a box of items that was included when we were moved. Destiny?

I first contacted the DMV in Washington State to see if any record of the car was on file. That was a dead end. All of their files were purged after ten years. Not to be denied, I wrote to Chrysler to see if there was any trace in old records within their archives. Again nothing. So I kind of lost interest and figured that it was a lost cause in finding the car.

In the meantime, I had changed jobs and was now working for a company that required that I travel to Canada. This is when things happened. On one of my trips to Edmonton, Alberta, I was staying at a hotel and was going across the parking lot to my rental car and a guy drove through the lot in a bright yellow '70 Plymouth Cuda. Well, me being a devoted Mopar guy, I waved at the fellow and he stopped and we struck up a conversation talking Mopars. Well, things expanded and we agreed we would meet later that day at a local watering hole and talk more.

We met up later and the fellow brought along a few of his buddies. More devoted Mopar guys. I was not aware at that time as to how many avid Mopar guys were in Edmonton, Alberta. These guys ate and drunk Mopars. Literally and figuratively. So as the stories were being shared, I, of course, told them of my original '67 GTX and that I had tried to find some years earlier but had no luck. As things happened, one of the guys in the group said that there was a photographer and he was a collector of mid-60s B-bodies. More specifically 1967 GTXs. And if my old car would still be around, he would know.

So now I was really excited to see what might happen with this twist of information. The next day, I contacted the gentleman and went to his office in Edmonton. I'll never forget this visit. In his garage was a 1967 GTX, Hemi four-speed convertible that he had bought new. Bright blue. White interior. White top. It was spectacular. He proceeded to tell me all about his car and countless other '67 GTXs that he knew of. When it came to asking about mine, he was not familiar with it, but if I would provide him the info I had on it, he would do some "asking around" and see what he could find.

I returned to California and some time went by and out of the clear blue sky, I get a letter from him and he wanted to tell me that on my next trip to Edmonton to be sure and get ahold of him, that he had some news about my car. Well, needless to say, I couldn't plan a trip soon enough back to Canada. That would have to have been in the early '90s.

When I got back to Edmonton, I went to his office and he told me that he was quite certain that my car had been sold to a fellow in British Columbia years earlier. He in turn had sold it to a guy in Calgary, who in turn sold it to another guy there in Edmonton. That guy in Edmonton then sold it back to the guy that had sold it to him in Calgary. Then the guy in Calgary had sold it to a husband and wife team of collectors in Montreal. They in turn commence an attempt to restore it. They started to collect various pieces and parts that they could find to do the restoration. Apparently they ran out of money and then sold it to another collector in Toronto.

That guy's name was Jim Beamish. He was a general contractor and did restorations as a hobby. Sometime before Beamish got it, someone had put a Hemi in it. Beamish then decided that he didn't want to complete the restoration and wanted to get his money out of it. That is when he took it to an auction in Buffalo, New York.

As the story unfolds, the car didn't go to the reserve and Beamish took it back to Toronto. I did not know Beamish's name at that time, but I contacted the auction house in Buffalo and they gave me his contact information. I immediately called him to see what he could tell me about the car. I was so excited I could not contain myself. I told Beamish that I wanted for him to confirm the VIN number of the car he had. He told me that he would check and call me back. Some time went past and he called and read me the VIN on the car and it was my old '67 GTX!! I was in disbelief!

Beamish proceeded to tell me that he knew all the history of the car and that it was an "all-original Hemi car" bought and sold in Canada. That was when I informed him that I had interest to buy the car but I was quite certain that the engine was not original to the car. He countered back telling me that I was wrong. So I asked to check the casting number on the block to see when the block was cast. He called back and told me that the casting date was 10/31/66. Of course, I was then able to tell him that the engine in the car had a casting date that was after the build date on the car, which confirmed that the engine was not correct.

If I recall, this information did not make him happy. But it did open the opportunity for negotiating a price for the car. We haggled back and forth for some time and came to a value of $25,000 US which was about $23,000 Canadian at the time with the exchange rate. Done deal. I was told that the car was "partially restored." This took place in the spring of 1993.

Now all I had to do was arrange to get it hauled out of Toronto to my home in California. That is when things went sideways. I arranged to transfer the funds. That went smoothly. I was told it ran. Barely. That was all I knew for sure. So sight unseen, and while keeping in mind this was at a time that cell phones, internet and picture transfers were in some early stages of happening, I bought the car.

I contracted a transport company to pick the car up. All went according to plan until I get a call from the driver of the transport notifying me that he was at the border crossing in Detroit and that US Customs had put a hold on the car and told him that he had to unload it, and that they were impounding it for a cloud on the VIN showing that the car had been reported to have been stolen.

This is when things really got crazy. What next, do you ask? I got on the phone and started calling various people that I had contacted over the years in my search for the car and found that this is what had happened: There was a guy in Spokane that had owned the car and had sold it to another guy in Vancouver, British Columbia. I had talked to the guy in BC earlier when I was tracking the car, but he had never told me the entire story as to how he got it. He now told me that he had bought the car and had driven down to Spokane with his trailer to pick up the car. When he got to where the car was, the seller told him he didn't want to sell it. That, of course, PO'd the Canadian guy in that he had already paid the guy for the car and made the trip to Spokane. The seller in Spokane told the Canadian he would have to wait till the following day before he could get to the bank and get the money to pay him back for the car. The Canadian told me that the seller worked a swing shift at a local saw mill and took off work that afternoon. So the Canadian guy said he went back to the guy's house where the GTX was sitting alongside of his house and loaded it up on his trailer an took off for Canada. He crossed the border at Revelstoke in British Columbia, north of Spokane. He told me that he didn't need the title because in Canada, all that is needed was a bill of sale for proof of ownership. This all took place sometime in the mid-to-late '80s.

So now the car was in Canada for the next several years and numerous owners. But what about who stole the car? The Canadian? The seller in Spokane had the car financed through a local credit union and when he found that the Canadian had taken the car, he turned it in as being stolen and the insurance company paid it off to the credit union. It was later figured out by the authorities that the guy in Spokane had actually been paid twice for it. I was told that the guy was busted for that.

But the irony of the matter is that no title has existed at the time because the guy that had sold it to the guy who had reported it stolen never gave the registration to the guy who had financed it at the credit union. So I contacted the guy in Spokane that had told me earlier he still had the registration for the car, and that no one had ever asked him for it. I called him and confirmed that he, in fact, still had the registration and asked if he would file with the Washington State DMV request for a lost title. He was okay with that. And in that, the DMV in Olympia, Washington had told me that the records were purged from their files and they had no record of the car. I asked him what he would want for helping out and he graciously told me that he would love seeing me get "my car back." The only condition was I had to give him "first right of refusal" if I were to ever sell it.

A short time later, he sent me a re-issued title for the car and I then in turn sent that title to my brother in Spokane and he went to a local DMV service office in Spokane and presented the title to the agent telling them that he was now gifting the car to me and wanted to switch ownership to my name. About two weeks later, the title showed up here in California with new Washington license plates.

In the meantime, the car was still sitting in an impound warehouse in Detroit awaiting disposition. This would have been sometime in late summer of 1993. As soon as I got the title and license plates, I contacted US Customs in Detroit and informed them that I was the title holder of the car and that it needed to be released. I explained that I had sent it into Canada for some "restoration work" and was now bringing it back to the US. They required that I send them a notarized copy of the title, current registration and the license plates. A few more agonizing days passed and I received a call from US Customs telling me that the car was released from impound and could be picked up.

Whew! That was a bullet sweating time. I contacted the transporter to go in and pick it up. About a week later, it was delivered to me here in California.

And now you know the rest of the long and agonizing story of how I finally bought my '67 GTX the second time! It was sometime in the late '90s that I finally got the car back here in the USA. To be honest, I was totally disappointed when I first looked at it. The "so-called restoration" was a disaster. The car had been painted in a silver coat and then shot with numerous coats of clear. It was hideous. The clear coat was yellowing and the previous prep work was showing signs of where the car was painted in red years ago. It was missing large parts of the interior. No vinyl top. Body work was terrible. It was a mess. But because I still had in my possession all of the original paperwork and documentation about the car, no one had nothing to work with to restore the car to its originality.

My only choice was to start over again and do it right from scratch. And that is what I did.

Since its arrival here in California, I completely disassembled the car, stripped it to bare metal and repainted it in its original optional Silver Buffed Metallic single stage enamel. I went to great extremes to make sure that the "blotching and orange peel" are in the finish. I wanted to make it look as it was in 1966, complete with all the imperfections that were when built in '66. I found a date-coded 426 Hemi block (8-23-66) and built a completely stock engine for the car with all of the pieces and parts correct with date codes. Every piece and part on the car, including the engine are correct coded for the car. I never claim that it is the original motor. But the August date-coded block is correct for the build date of the car. In 1967, federal law requiring imprinting VIN numbers of engine, trans and rear ends, were not yet in place. That requirement was put into law starting with the 1968 model year. So any Mopar prior to 1968 could have a verification of correctness using the build date of the car.

I documented all of this story and history in my files. Over the time that I was searching for the car, until getting it back in my possession here in California, it was bought, sold, and stolen more than sixteen different times! Besides myself purchasing it twice, the guy in Calgary had bought and sold it three different times.

As it is today, I went to great pains and efforts to bring it back to where it was when I bought it in November of 1966. I have been told that it is the only 1967 GTX Hemi car in existence optioned as it is. This can be confirmed by checking the original window sticker.

I completed the restoration of the car in the early 2000s. Since completing the "resurrection" of the GTX, it has seen limited use. Sharon and I have driven it to the Central Coast of California for car shows and cruises. I have shown it at shows in Southern California, Bay Area, and Nevada. I have been presented a number of awards and trophies. And sharing the story of its history has always been rewarding. It is for sure a special car that is loaded with a bountiful history of its existence over nearly sixty years since its creation.

Other than those occasions, it sits under a car cover stuck back in the corner undisturbed. It is truly a one-off 1967 Plymouth Hemi GTX. My passion for Mopars has expanded over the years to acquiring a number of other Mopar favorites from the '60s. I have reached a time in my life that it may be time to start selling the cars. But I will never part with Ol' Gray. When I pass on, Sharon can make a decision as to what to do with it. Tough call.