JAY LENO’S PIECE about American muscle cars in Octane 241 had me revisiting a cherished memory of an epic road trip made in 1973 when I’d just turned 21.
A friend and I were fulfilling an adolescent ambition to ‘do the States’. A total lack of budget wasn’t going to hinder us, so to get from Detroit to California we found a car delivery agency in the Detroit Free Press that had a car that needed driving to Las Vegas to a guy who was stationed out there in the Air Force. Incredibly, we would be given the car upon payment of a small refundable deposit, conditional only that the FBI would be notified if we didn’t arrive in five days.
We duly showed up to collect ‘a small Dodge’, only to find that it was a 440ci Dodge Super Bee, an absolute beast of a car. We managed to hide our incredulity at such good fortune and assured the chap’s parents
