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Photos by Helen Bradley
Story by Gord Bradley

In ’67 Lou was a 19-year-old part time mill worker in Port Alberni saving up for his first car. Papa Vermette topped up Lou’s $1,500 on the condition that he buys a “new” car as Lou’s older brother always bought junkers that were still cluttering up the yard. Lou found a Mopar dealership in Nanaimo that was going out of business and there in the showroom was a 1967 GTX! Love and money is never a good combination and Lou drove home his new GTX. Late one night Lou was heading home and approaching a particular hill that he always enjoyed. On the straight stretch, if you hit about 75 mph or so, you become airborne and can hit the other side of the next dip. It was a real rush, kind of like a motocross rider clearing a table top.

Unfortunately, there was a cop sitting in a driveway at the very spot Lou landed. The chase was on. As Lou turned onto the street he lived on he could see another cop car further down the street with his red lights on. Lou quickly pulled into the dilapidated garage that he kept the GTX in, ran into the house, turned the lights off and locked the doors. It worked, the cops drove slowly by but the dreaded knock on the door didn’t happen. Another bad combination is a ’67 GTX 440 and a boy of 19!

Another night Lou and his girlfriend decided to go parking behind the school for a little romance. It had been raining for days and the ground was pretty soft where he parked the GTX. When it was time to leave the car was just sitting spinning the tires. There was no way they were getting out unless one of them got out and pushed. His girlfriend volunteered (what a keeper) and gradually the car pulled ahead. Lou looked back and his girlfriend was nowhere to be seen. He jumped out of the car, ran back, and there she was lying face down in the mud! A quick trip to a nearby creek to clean off the mud and home she went.

Many stories, races, beers, and tickets later the GTX had to go. It was 1971 and, like most of us, it was time to get married, start a family, and drive something more economical and grown up, so said his future father in law. The GTX was traded in on a new ’71 Vega….not his best decision! The Vega lasted about a year, the wife a bit longer, but a dream of having put the GTX in storage haunted Lou for years. In 2008 Lou found the GTX of his dreams. It wasn’t a ’67, it was a ’69 and Lou knew he had to have it. Once in his possession the dreams stopped. Therapy might have been cheaper but nowhere near as much fun.

This GTX was found on the coast of California. While rust free, it wasn’t a numbers matching car and that was fine with Lou. A 528 Hemi can make you smile much more than a 440. While the previous owner did much of the work on the car, Lou, with help from Peter Wille, completed the car to the high standard you see here. The Hemi has the aluminum heads and a single plane, dual quad, intake manifold which has been dyno tested to 531.6 HP at the rear wheels and 534.8 ft. lbs. of torque. Custom built aluminized headers exhaust through 3” stainless steel pipes, Dynomax mufflers with electronic dumps when raced.

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