With a grandfather who was a die-hard Chevy guy, you’d think Joe Sokola’s automotive passion would be for the bow-tie brand. Not so. Instead, he fell hard for Mother MoPar, and he remembers exactly how it happened.
“My grandfather was a collector, but he had ’20s and ’30s Chevrolets, and they’re still around,” Sokola says. “So I grew up ‘Chevy,’ but for some reason, I went to the Dodges and Plymouths.”
To explain the reason Sokola went sweet on “MoPar,” he shuffles back to his childhood memories and describes the driveway next door.
“When we were kids, the neighbor’s [mom] had a Coronet four-door, and she used to drive us to school in it,” he says. “In the late 1970s, you didn’t see so much of them anymore, because they were so rough.”
If the neighbor’s surprisingly well-preserved Coronet didn’t absolutely solidify Sokola’s passion for midsize B-body MoPars, a schoolmate’s 383-powered Super Bee completed the obsession.
“A friend had a dark-green Super Bee, and he’d pick me up in it, and that car was over the top,” Sokola says. “His was a ’68. The thing was shot and he ended up banging it up. It was rough, and he drove it a year and he taught me how to drive a four-speed with that car.
“His name was Kris Simmons; the Simmons family were all MoPar people. When my friend showed up with the Coronet Super Bee in the late 1970s, I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ I have been hooked on them ever since. Since then, I bought them, fixed them up, sold
