In 1964 my parents bought a 25,000 mile red and white ’59 Plymouth Sport Suburban, 9 passenger, Golden Commando 395 (395 Ft LBs of torque @ 3000 RPM), 361 Cu In, 305 HP, Torqueflite, 3.31 SureGrip, PS, PB, Power windows, power tailgate window with the switch right inside next to the rear seat, air leveling system, MirrorMatic electronic day/night mirror and doggy dish wheel covers. We visited my grandparents on Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights right outside Philly and coming home, on the Roosevelt Blvd, Mom normally drove while Dad was sacked out. The boulevard is light to light 3 or 6 lanes depending on the time period and if Mom was first at the light she was first across! She would go right up against the secondarys but not pop the quad. My brother and I would be in the back seat laughing at the guys who got snookered off the line. Mom's philosophy was that most accidents happen at intersections and the faster you're through one the safer you are! And yes I still subscribe to that philosophy! One time Mom was at a traffic light and when it went green the guy in the left turn lane tried to beat her across the intersection. Operative word was tried! Mom punched it for the only time and she took off down the road. The conversation after school went like “Did that ever happen to you”? “Uh, yeah Mom, once or twice”!
So then in 1968 I got my driver’s license and yes my parents let a 17 year old loose on the public highways with 300HP! I lived in Levittown, PA and went to high school in Langhorne, PA. The high school is on the hill overlooking what is lovingly known in the area as “The Superhighway”. The Superhighway is a 4 lane limited access road built in the late Thirties to go from right above where the PA turnpike RT 1 interchange is to Trenton, NJ. It didn’t get to Trenton until much later. What it did was go about 5 or 6 miles and end at a stop sign TEE intersection with piles of stone on the other side of the road. At least once or twice a week, it seemed, a street racer or a drunk would end up in the piles of stone. The deal with my parents was that I was allowed to drive to school one day a week. First week, after school, I went out and did 90 MPH! Wow! Then second week, 100 MPH! Third week I followed one of the guys in his ’61, ’62 or ’63 T-Bird and we went top end! I couldn’t catch him, but he couldn’t get away either. My speedometer said somewhere around 115. I couldn’t “peg” the needle but above 110-115 it would bang against the peg.
Every time I drove the car I was looking for a race, at a stop light, from a roll or top end. I manually shifted the trans. At first I did the second gear and drive buttons. Dad said never to use first gear button, but when I lost a heads up to a ’57 or ’58 Fury by a car length I started using first. The tough part was the car weighed about 4,000 pounds and I was giving away 400 or 500 pounds to cars like neighbor kid’s 327 4 speed Impala. He beat me one afternoon after school on The Superhighway by about a car and a half. The other thing was a cast iron Torqueflite couldn’t hold second gear. At around 80 it would upshift automatically. A full throttle upshift into drive the car would jump anywhere from half a fender to half a car on whoever I was racing. My favorite place to race was the Levittown Parkway, a four lane road from one side of Levittown to the other. One night I raced a ’64 Gran Prix from a 15 MPH roll. I don’t think it was a 421, I think it may have been a standard 303 horsepower 389. We were even, fender to fender, door to door until I went into drive and pulled a half a fender on him. And we stayed into it. It was 1:30 in the morning and we were coming up to a blinking yellow intersection. A car had stopped at the blinking red and had plenty to go through the light but no he stayed to see who won! We went through the intersection at about 110.
