Northern Exposure '03

Joseph Huston

'69 Caprice

These days we've become accustomed to seeing father-and-son teams at car shows, only lately, dad's the one driving the American muscle while junior is often seen polishing a slammed import. So you can imagine our delight when we spotted Joseph Huston's '69 Caprice, which was accompanied by a display board showing then-14-year-old Huston with a grinder taking the big Chevy's rusted flanks to bare steel. It seems that Huston the senior went to high school with the Chevy's previous owner back in the early '70s, and he remembered that the car had been parked in a barn since about 1972. The Hustons convinced the owner to sell, and Joseph got a crash course in automotive restoration. Obviously a quick study, Joseph performed nearly all the work himself, save for some final panel smoothing and the application of paint. The original 427 and TH400 still perform flawlessly, as proven during Joseph's 800-mile round trip.

Steve Glubke

'64 Dodge

It's amazing how so many of the valuable cars from the '60s and '70s were actually nearly worthless prior to the musclecar boom of the mid-'80s. We've all heard stories of super-rare factory cars that were traded off for pickup trucks or motorcycles, or simply junked, but this tale has a happier outcome. Back around 1981, Steve Glubke was a young guy looking for a home for his recently completed Hemi engine so he could go drag racing. As luck would have it, he happened upon a '64 Dodge two-door sedan that was already set up for the strip, less motor and trans, and it only had 1,200 miles on the clock since it had been raced from new. Steve bought the car, and then went back a week later with more cash to purchase the aluminum front body panels--that's right, Steve had bought himself an original Chrysler factory drag car. Today, the car wears a beautiful paint job in the original shade of red (the doorjambs and interior are still original and perfect) and the odometer reads just over 2,000 miles. The Hemi is still installed, but Steve also has a correctly dated '64 Max Wedge on a stand at home.