by waaytoomuchintothis » Wed Oct 15, 2014 4:53 pm
I miss those days. There were so many cars in our group that were classics (though we had no idea- we thought it would last forever), and we ran the living sh*t out of every car. There was a '66 Nova convertible in our bunch that had a 6 in it with a 3 on the tree that ran pretty respectable. Roadrunners, Mustangs, GTX, one AMX, a Charger, my Coronet, and a few odds and ends- god, we had fun. Regular gas was 100 octane, premium was 109-112, and they all cost around a quarter a gallon or so, the streets were smooth and well maintained, and there wasn't a cop car in the county that could catch us- but Motorola could always catch us, so we didn't try to outrun them.
Sometimes, the cop was a gearhead and stopped us just to admire the hardware. But no one ever tried to make it some kind of stupid big deal. The highest fine I ever paid was for 60mph in a 35mph zone, but the actual speed was 104mph in a 30mph zone. People were reasonable in those days, so going too fast got a fine and we took it, but the numbers were usually massaged to make the fine more in the "real world". I was stopped on a motorcycle in 1969 on I-40 doing 115mph, and the motorcycle cop kept me on the side of the road long enough for his Harley and my Honda to cool off while we chatted. Then he let me go- good guy, and not that unusual in those days.