Stories
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The story that he dropped on us one evening, while cruising around drinking beer, was that a guy we knew from high school, had bought a brand new '58 Chevy. He was caught in a speed trap on highway 12 doing a hundred and forty, by the Fox Lake police ! Hundred and forty?
Well that was the story. The cops took the car from him and drove it back to the station house. It was probably, as memory serves, a 387 horsepower engine with 3 speed on the column. It was the fastest thing the cops had ever driven, and so the police force went out and bought all new '58 Chevys, same make, model and engine.
I myself had a ride in this car. I was hitch-hiking home from basketball practice at the high school, late on a sunny autumn Saturday morning, and he picked me up. And of course he immediately 'floored-it', and so I got the fastest acceleration of the time driven into the back of the seat. This had happened before I heard Dicky's story, and I did not know it was a freak-car, and that this was the fastest car of the time. However I can attest to the truth of the power of that car. It was the first real speed-car I had ridden in.
Now the punch-line was that they were all 'dogs'. None of the cars the police bought were anywhere near as fast as the original. So Dicky finished the story by surmising that it was 'souped to the gills' at the factory and sold locally to entice others to buy the same make, which were not 'souped-up' at all. We were cynical even then and it is called officially these days 'bait and switch'.
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