Nate S
Well-Known Member
@Richard Cranium Here’s one for you. This guy lives behind the house where my wife grew up. 8000 miles. Once again, in the local paper.
BY BUD WILKINSON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
Like many teenage drivers back in the muscle car era, Gary Lucia of Torrington could be a bit reckless when he got behind the steering wheel.
It’s understandable, though, as he drove a muscular 1970 Plymouth Road Runner– orange with black vinyl top– that he got new when he was 18 years old.
Lucia still owns it and after initially admitting to getting “several” tickets back then, he confessed that the ticket count was actually much, much higher.
“I think about a dozen in the first three years I had it. And, in fact, I lost my license once because of it. It took me several months to get it back,” he said.
The hi-vis Road Runner was a familiar blur in Torrington in the early 1970s. Lucia would tear up and down East Main Street, the favored cruise route between a McDonald’s restaurant that then existed atop the hill on the east side of the city and the shopping plaza downtown. The car certainly impressed his friends.
“Some of them were a little jealous and they loved it. They loved going for rides in it. One of them especially loved it when I outran a cop with it. I was a little nuts, so I did things like that back then,” Lucia said, recalling that he once got the Road Runner up to 135 miles per hour on Route 8. It was a frightening experience as a wind gust nudged the front end.
This week, after having been parked in his heated garage for a whopping 48 years, the 51-year-old Road Runner was back cruising on East Main Street, albeit at a much slower pace. Lucia only drove it for three years after purchasing it. That it sat gathering dust for so long wasn’t planned.
“It really wasn’t a decision as much as I put it away for the winter as I always did and just never wound up taking it out until the beginning of this year,” he said, acknowledging even he’s amazed that at the duration of its hibernation. “I kept saying I was going to take it out. That was about 10 years ago I started saying that. I just never did until this year.”
The Road Runner exited his garage in April. Lucia had it towed to Gary’s Hilltop Auto Repair in Torrington where Gary Del Monte replaced the gas tank, worked on the brakes, addressed the hose and belts and flushed the radiator.
The car “was fine for a couple weeks but actually one of the lifters had rusted and that ended up dropping my oil pressure, bent the push rod, so the heads had to come off.”
It then went back for engine work and it wasn’t until Monday afternoon that he picked it up and drove it home.
“Gary is great with muscle cars and the job was quite extensive,” Lucia said.
The Road Runner is powered by a 383-cubic-inch V8 engine and has a four-speed manual transmission with a Hurst shifter with pistol grip. After he parked it in 1973, Lucia shifted to driving cars with automatic transmissions, so getting back behind the wheel was “a little scary. It has horsepower I haven’t been used to,” he said.
While waiting for the Road Runner to be fixed, Lucia bought a 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Cobra allowing him to practice with a high-power model for about a month before the Road Runner was ready. The Shelby is a modern vehicle, though, and the Road Runner “is quite different. It’s very easy to stall it.”
While the Road Runner looks to be orange in color, Lucia said the color is a variant called “TorRed.”
“It looks orange to me but a deeper orange, not a Sunkist orange,” said Lucia. Even after 51 years, the paint is still vibrant, perhaps because the Road Runner got put away every winter when it was originally on the road.
In addition to looking nearly new, the Road Runner displays an amazingly low number on the odometer. It has only been driven a little more than 8,000 miles, making the car not only a survivor but a valuable throwback to when muscle cars ruled the roads.
“I had a really fantastic offer several years ago; but it’s not only the car, it’s my youth and it’s not for sale,” he said.
That offer was for more than $100,000, a hefty premium from the roughly $3,300 that Lucia paid for the Road Runner in 1970. His plan now is to “just drive it. Going to keep it. Probably pass it on to my son unless I get some ridiculous offer, but I doubt it.”
Like many teenage drivers back in the muscle car era, Gary Lucia of Torrington could be a bit reckless when he got behind the steering wheel.
It’s understandable, though, as he drove a muscular 1970 Plymouth Road Runner– orange with black vinyl top– that he got new when he was 18 years old.
Lucia still owns it and after initially admitting to getting “several” tickets back then, he confessed that the ticket count was actually much, much higher.
“I think about a dozen in the first three years I had it. And, in fact, I lost my license once because of it. It took me several months to get it back,” he said.
The hi-vis Road Runner was a familiar blur in Torrington in the early 1970s. Lucia would tear up and down East Main Street, the favored cruise route between a McDonald’s restaurant that then existed atop the hill on the east side of the city and the shopping plaza downtown. The car certainly impressed his friends.
“Some of them were a little jealous and they loved it. They loved going for rides in it. One of them especially loved it when I outran a cop with it. I was a little nuts, so I did things like that back then,” Lucia said, recalling that he once got the Road Runner up to 135 miles per hour on Route 8. It was a frightening experience as a wind gust nudged the front end.
This week, after having been parked in his heated garage for a whopping 48 years, the 51-year-old Road Runner was back cruising on East Main Street, albeit at a much slower pace. Lucia only drove it for three years after purchasing it. That it sat gathering dust for so long wasn’t planned.
“It really wasn’t a decision as much as I put it away for the winter as I always did and just never wound up taking it out until the beginning of this year,” he said, acknowledging even he’s amazed that at the duration of its hibernation. “I kept saying I was going to take it out. That was about 10 years ago I started saying that. I just never did until this year.”
The Road Runner exited his garage in April. Lucia had it towed to Gary’s Hilltop Auto Repair in Torrington where Gary Del Monte replaced the gas tank, worked on the brakes, addressed the hose and belts and flushed the radiator.
The car “was fine for a couple weeks but actually one of the lifters had rusted and that ended up dropping my oil pressure, bent the push rod, so the heads had to come off.”
It then went back for engine work and it wasn’t until Monday afternoon that he picked it up and drove it home.
“Gary is great with muscle cars and the job was quite extensive,” Lucia said.
The Road Runner is powered by a 383-cubic-inch V8 engine and has a four-speed manual transmission with a Hurst shifter with pistol grip. After he parked it in 1973, Lucia shifted to driving cars with automatic transmissions, so getting back behind the wheel was “a little scary. It has horsepower I haven’t been used to,” he said.
While waiting for the Road Runner to be fixed, Lucia bought a 2008 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Cobra allowing him to practice with a high-power model for about a month before the Road Runner was ready. The Shelby is a modern vehicle, though, and the Road Runner “is quite different. It’s very easy to stall it.”
While the Road Runner looks to be orange in color, Lucia said the color is a variant called “TorRed.”
“It looks orange to me but a deeper orange, not a Sunkist orange,” said Lucia. Even after 51 years, the paint is still vibrant, perhaps because the Road Runner got put away every winter when it was originally on the road.
In addition to looking nearly new, the Road Runner displays an amazingly low number on the odometer. It has only been driven a little more than 8,000 miles, making the car not only a survivor but a valuable throwback to when muscle cars ruled the roads.
“I had a really fantastic offer several years ago; but it’s not only the car, it’s my youth and it’s not for sale,” he said.
That offer was for more than $100,000, a hefty premium from the roughly $3,300 that Lucia paid for the Road Runner in 1970. His plan now is to “just drive it. Going to keep it. Probably pass it on to my son unless I get some ridiculous offer, but I doubt it.”
The white one was spectacular.
