Early this morning I was on one of my normal routes for my day job, I run a small trucking outfit and drive 5 tonne Hino’s daily. There’s an area between New Westminster and Richmond along highway 99 that most locals know as Queensborough Landing, this aint’ no New York State so we can’t say it’s “Queens” I drive passed this neighborhood up to 10 times a day in the truck and the highway is no stranger to a fender bender and subsequent gridlock. With the desire to keep my day on pace for an early self dismissal I was keen to find a way around just such a situation this morning.

To keep people’s privacy and personal property I will only say that I was on a detour in the Queensborough Landing area in my bumbling Hino and happened to spot the unmistakable Chrysler colour of Hemi Orange. As I got closer I could tell it was a 70-71 Cuda and my heart fluttered with excitement. I could see the classic looking BFG Radial T/A’s with white lettering, a vinyl roof and the “Go Wing” sitting on the rear decklid. Due to a tight schedule and the desire to not parallel park a 28 foot long truck in a residential area, I passed right on my taking a couple mental snapshots of the car.

I ended up making short work of my tasks for the day and was off well before rush hour had every major arterial road in the area plugged with people rushing home to watch Tik Tok videos. With a camera stashed away in my car almost every time I leave the house I was prepared enough to run back into the neighborhood and see if the car was still there.

Like a creepy inanimate object stalker I rolled passed the Cuda a couple times and found a spot to park around the corner. I grabbed my camera and walked over to the driveway where the car was parked, I immediately noticed that as beautiful as this Cuda was, it was hiding a disastrous secret and was obviously parked in plain sight for a reason.

I could very well be dead wrong, but creeping down the driveway from the front of the car was a fairly prominent oil slick. There was no red tint to it so it definitely wasn’t ATF, I wondered what had happened to this 1970 beauty. Was it an oil change gone awry with a drip pan being kicked over? Or had a connecting rod kicked its way out of the 340 V8.

A quick bit of identifiable history for you; some dead giveaways that a cuda is a 1970 or 71 is the single headlights and the single split grille. To narrow it right down to being a 70 you have to know that the 340 was only offered in the 1970 year as well as the prominent and awkward looking (in my opinion) “Go Spoiler” that I previously mentioned. Seeing BC collector plates also tells me that this car has probably been restored to factory spec as you have to have everything “stock” to obtain said plate in our province. There are exceptions to modified collector cars these days but the paint, clean appearance and stock stance and wheels point to this being someone’s baby and labour of love. The final little piece of cool attached to the mopar sheet metal are the standard (or optional depending on what Mopar guy you talk to) fog lights that flank the license plate. I love that this person has kept them as most people remove them for a clean look.

I only clicked a few photos off before I walked back to the car and headed for home, I thought about knocking on the door but these days it seems people aren’t fans of random visitors. Besides who knows if the owner is still inside trying recoup from a day of dealing with catastrophic failure, I don’t want to be the one adding insult to injury. So for now I’ll just be leaving this at enjoying a moment, seeing a beautiful hero car from the 70’s and getting a couple digital keepsakes for myself, and you, to look at. Maybe I’ll roll by if I’m in the area again one day, maybe the car will be long gone only leaving the liquid dinosaur bone stain on the pavement. Maybe it’ll be on jackstands or have an engine crane dangling above, maybe not with that short incline actually. I always think of these situations when I see these things, this time the car was so beautiful I just felt like sharing. Enjoy the snaps, have a great week and I’ll see you on the road!

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