I bought my Chevelle drag car cheap!

In 1990 I went to go see a 1969 Chevelle Malibu Super Sport that my friend Greg wanted to buy. The man who selling it had purchased it for his 16 year old son for $3800 the year before. The car had a candy apple blue metallic paint job and it couldn’t have been more than a couple of years since it had been restored. The body of the car was a mess. The boy had rear-ended a Metrobus, a fire-hydrant and a least three other objects. The hood looked like a potato chip and it had no hood hinges. The boy had taken the original wheels, sold them and put cheap Keystone mags on it that were already pitted and rusting.
How we found out about the car was a story Juan (who lived in the same neighborhood) had told us. Apparently the 16 year old boy had out-run the Prince George County Police on Adelphi Road while trying to hold down the hood and shift a wide ratio four speed at the same time. (He was over 6 foot tall and had long arms.) The original Super Sport hood went into a gravel ditch and he pulled onto a side road and into a driveway and cut the lights.
The father of the boy wanted $1000 for the car, and my friend Greg backed out. I had heard the 396 Chevy big block roar to life and I wanted it. I gave the man $850 and I took the car home on a tow dolly. He said if he didn’t sell it the Chevelle it was gonna be towed since the tags were dead and it was parked on a neighborhood street and he added that his son would probably end up in the county lock-up in Upper Marlboro if he drove it anymore.
Well at first I wanted to restore the Chevelle to original. I spent months in my back yard sanding and filling all the dents and dings with Bondo and spraying it with primer. I got the hood somewhat straight but it was never right. I put a cheap exhaust system with pipes that exited before the rear wheels and with the open headers you could hear me coming. It was louder than most delivery trucks.
The kid had put his fist thru the dash and I bought new dash pad for it. Well when I went to put it on the metal behind the pad was so mangled the new one would not match up and it was beyond repair. This 16 year old must have had quite a temper!
Well at that time I had restored my 1968 Firebird convertible, rebuilt the original Pontiac 400 and was sort of reluctant to drag race it because if I went faster than 13.49 I would have to put roll bars in it. I wanted to keep the car original as possible.