Contacting S.B.

The Title of the car was issued in 1983 for an owner who, at least at that time, lived in a small town in New Jersey, not far from Delaware River.  I did some Google street viewing around the area, to see the environment where Snowback once used to ride.

The curiosity in me rose little by little. Would I be able to contact the guy who registered the car for 30 years ago ? How would he react on me contacting him after all these years. He must have had his reason to sell the car. Why would he bother replying me.

I hit the name of the owner (I’ll call him “S.B.“  to protect his privacy until he otherwise wishes) in the search field and had a list of various persons by that name. Many of the hits seemed to either be too young or to live so far away that they would not possibly be the person I was looking for.  By adding the name of the town in the search, I quickly had the street address of the person I thought I was searching for. I wrote him a letter. After a couple of weeks, the letter had finally reached him (thanks to the contribution by US Mail who was able to deliver the letter to his current address, though he had moved to an other state) and he replied.

I knew this car must have special meaning for him, as he had owned it for nearly 3 decades. Though, it was a very nice surprise that S.B. wrote back. But what he wrote, was even more surprising and gives a lot of perspective and encouragement for my future efforts.

He had acquired the car already in 1978, at the age of 11, with the money he earned for cutting grass in the neighborhood. Extremely respectable attitude and devotion from a young guy, isn’t it.  It is still unclear to me who is the first owner of the car or is he the person who was the Previous Owner before S.B. 

I had wondered why the standard-looking ’68 302-2V was equipped dual-point Autolite distributor, normally used in HiPo versions of 289. The reason for this may be that according to S.B. the car had come from factory equipped with K Code Engine.  So, instead of A Code with 225 HP, it had the most powerful option that could be factory ordered. Why ? Maybe nobody knows. Anyhow,the engine had earlier been pulled and replaced with a 302, but S.B. had been able to locate and save the engine for his future purposes. Knowing all this, it makes sense that the dual-point is from the original engine.

I am not sure how often it occurred something like this that the car was equipped with other options than what it was supposed to, but I know this would not be unique either. There are stories of cars which have had options other than those specified in the VIN and door tag. I have no reason to doubt anything S.B. has told, neither can I imagine a reason for S.B. to tell fairy tales, especially now when the car is already sold. He seemed to be interested in what I am about to do with the car, so it is for sure that I will be in correspondence with him in future as well.

The story of the K Code engine, true or not, adds to the value of this vehicle. Think about it, 271 HP under the hood, drum brakes, no power brakes, no power steering, 11-year-old-kid behind the steering wheel. 

I think I'll start calling Snowback as “Delaware Destroyer” as it might have been one.