A bit heavier than the average family heirloom
Classic Dodge Monaco bought as first car more than four decades ago
OTTAWA They were four Carleton University engineering students who were completing the fouryear program in the spring of 1970. Their grad celebration would be a three- week 16,000- kilometre road trip across the northern United States to Yellowstone Park, south to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, along the southern states to Miami, and then north to Ottawa. Clearly, they needed a reliable car.
Barry King set out to buy a car that was suitable. Ample trunk space and low fuel consumption were critical.
Fellow student George Justice said his uncle was about to trade his 1967 Dodge Monaco for a new car. King bought the car for $ 1,800 in February 1970. The four students left Ottawa right after their final engineering exam.
The Monaco was King’s first car. After the graduation trip, he drove it to work and on family trips for 18 years. King and his wife had twin boys and they came home from Ottawa’s Civic Hospital in the Dodge.
In 1981, King decided to take the car off the road during the winters. He stopped driving it altogether in 1988. By then, the car had travelled nearly half a million kilometres. It sat unused for 17 years, but when he retired in 2005, King decided to restore the car.
He had already been accumulating parts, such as original vinyltop material and new front fenders. He had bought a similar car in the 1970s, disassembled it and stored the parts in his attic. The restoration took five summers to complete, with King doing much of the work himself.
The restored car turned out to be better than new in many ways, thanks to ample sound- deadening material, a fully balanced engine, new base coat/ clear coat paint and radial tires. King spent nearly $ 45,000 restoring the car and that doesn’t include his labour. Its appraised value is less than half of that. When the restoration was complete in 2010, King prepared a video about his Monaco. ( youtube. com/ watch? v= kJ9Pq9WbuRQ).
In the five years since the restoration, King has driven the car 15,000 kilometres and is frequently at Ottawa- area classic car shows. Will the car ever be for sale? “Definitely not,” King says. “My sons wouldn’t hear of it. After all, it’s the first car they ever rode in.”