the only known factory-built ’64 Dodge Race Hemi wagon. With perfect 50/50 front/rear weight distribution, the Hemi Wagon didn’t need wheelbase manipulation to gather trophies, but it had a 17 year old driver.

His father, Harry Baker, ran Harry Baker Motors, a small but successful Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Newton, Kansas. He was in the Army Air Force during WWII and was a ball turret gunner aboard a B-17. That was one of the most vulnerable positions on the aircraft, but he made it through thirty combat missions over Germany without a scratch. Right after the war ended, Dad came home, started selling cars in 1946, and married his sweetheart.

The 426 Race Hemi was huge news in 1964. To launch it, Chrysler Corp. built approximately 50 Dodge lightweight sedans, 12 steel-nose hardtops, and this 440-series station wagon. It was first campaigned by son of the President of the Mopar parts division, and Dodge Vice President

At the 1964 NHRA Indy Nationals it won B/FX, the A, B, and C Factory Experimental rules did not require quantity production. They only called for the use of approved factory-sourced parts, which could be mixed and matched at will by factory engineers.

The race-ready wagon was sold to Harry Baker Motors before the end of the 1964 season.

Full story and gallery at http://www.hotrod.com/articles/factory-built-64-hemi-wagon-really-happened/

in the foreign films news dept: I Need A Dodge! Joe Strummer on the Run

The adventures of trying to find the Dart in 1997 that the guitarist Joe Strummer, of the Clash, left in Spain during his time there in 1986 when he got the news that his daughter was born, and he hurriedly returned to England.

After the punk icon’s passing, Nick Hall, a UK-born filmmaker and Clash fan who has lived in Barcelona since the mid ’90s, started digging up stories of Strummer’s time in Spain – the most obscure and outlandish of which was the tale of the missing Dodge,

Strummer headed to Spain in 1985 to flee the disaster that was The Clash version two, when his new line-up's album Cut The Crap flopped. On arrival in Granada, Strummer dug into the city’s musical culture. He was welcomed with open arms by local group 091 and Radio Fortuna.

Radio Fortuna helped with the purchase of a Barreiros, essentially a European edition of the Dodge-Dart. Strummer thrashed around the streets of Granada and Madrid with it. However, when he parked the car and flew back to the UK for the birth of his daughter Lola, he forgot where it was and never saw it again.

Drawing on the recollections of his friends in London and in Spain, his partner Gaby Holford, and the members of 091 and Radio Fortuna, this movie a story of more than just a car, it's how a rock n roller escapes failure.  “It was an escape. He was a man on the run. He was getting away from the tension in London,” says Santiago Auseron.

http://zona-rapida.blogspot.com/2016/08/musica-sobre-ruedas-el-dodge-que-joe.html
http://www.readjunk.com/news/movie/i-need-a-dodge-joe-strummer-on-the-run-documentary-out-october-16th/
http://www.musicfilmweb.com/2012/12/joe-strummer-nick-hall-spain-punk-documentary/

cool old towtruck

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