From $1900 to A Million Dollars For a 1971 Hemi 'Cuda coupe

oh yeah, that's all I know, that's all I'll do, I just don't know anything else, I know it as CUDA, yeah, this is a

million

dollars

, a

million

dollars

for this car. Mecum Auctions 2016, but back in the day, Frank Battle paid

1900

. so he was a junior in college, hauled it, raised it, drove it all over the country and today he's the world's Mopar survival specialist. My first car was a 318 - Barra

cuda

. ​​My father's friend had a used car line in Woodbridge, Virginia, so that summer. I came back from military school it was May of '71 and my father said you're going to work you're not going to waste your time this summer you have to go to work I got you a job I said ok but you have to drive to DCI.

He got me a job with Congressman Anderson in Washington DC, working in the Cannon House office building, so he told me you had to have a car because I'm not going to take you to Washington every day, so we went to Vince a lot . There were two Mopars sitting there green 70 Hemi Challenger f4 with a shaker and then a yellow 7318 barra

cuda

of course I knew what this was. I went in and asked Vince if he could give me the keys to the Hemi Challenger and he gave them to me. I was. I started it up I would say I said oh man this would be cool if I could rock this super trackpad automatic Hemi Cuda 1970 original paint original interior 700 miles original tires are still on most of the original exhaust is still just the hoses from the original belts clamp I have the original air filter, of course it's not, but we have it, it's on the other shelf, we can easily put it in, but as you can see, these original battery cables, what does the car do in your restoration facility?

We put an original H-pipe on it and did some minor repairs, so we took it to Survivor for a survivor driver, that's suitable for survivor work at the moment. The other thing is the interior, this car is absolutely beautiful and another nice one. The only thing they did was Ham Hamtramck, just the assembly of Hamtramck. You can see if the build sheet has never been taken out from behind the glove box. So I told Vince this is what I want and apparently went back to playing with the car checking it out. I made sure it was original, I wouldn't be fooled, so my dad came out furious within a couple of minutes and started cursing and saying dog, you're not buying that car.

Vince says he goes 200 miles per hour and gets 4 miles per gallon. We're not going to get that car, so let's try it out. We're going for a first spin with an original 7,000 mile Hemi Cuda. It is a unique experience. I assure. It's OK, go ahead. Well we'll start with a 1970 Hemi Cuda 426 Hemi with hydraulic lifter camshaft 410 super Track Pack rear that starts very easily, supposedly where do all these myths come from that Hemis aren't really hard to start running? , what are the... oh, I heard that in '70 I said well, no, Vince doesn't know what he's talking about, this thing doesn't get four miles per gallon, it won't go 200, no, he'll know you weren't getting so good and every Hemme I went through every

hemi

.

I ever had my first 71 temporary Hemi Cuda this thing ran like a kitten you pull the choke you turn the key and it starts all you gotta do is keep it in tune and don't kid around I was a kid then I was just into cars and I was drawn to Mopars In '68 when the roadrunner came out and then my friend's older friends started buying them and we started walking by the dealership all the time looking at them and that's where it grew. I have a full I. we have a full body photo we do full restorations from scratch uh uh the body shop is not here it's not here it's off site it's not a 14,000 square foot full body shop we have full restorations there I have a engine shop but my specialty my preference my specialty is the survivor that's what I maintain as my specialty we do excellent restorations everything receives the same amount of detail as any survivor if the client is willing to accept but we are known for survivors that's why There are so many survivors here and here in the shop and even in the body shop, that's an original 1,800 mile survivor right there, that car was with the original owner until December 15th and that's a 70 71 Hemi Challenger hundred 1800 not original. miles only one of 59 actually, because they only want specialized repairs, a survivor will come and say I just want to do the trunk so we'll take it and do it or we'll repair the metal behind the wheel wells and mix the paint and do make it look original and make sure it's three to four thousandths of an inch thick or two and a half thousandths of a bar depending on the car in the paint, so that's what we do with the survivors, then for the full restorations , we go down to the body shop, you'll see there are several in there, so this room is mainly this is where you restore the cars here, well this is where I do most of the mechanics, yeah, okay, look at the two elevators, like this We have two elevators here.

We kept driving and then we got the two poses and then I have all my tool presses, you know, we have our compressor, those are rebuilt leaf springs that we already prepared for cars around April of '73 when I met a friend of mine. Spiller, who is still around town today and we are still friends, had advertising for the local trading post on 70 Hemi Cuda, so I sold the brown 73 340 roadrunner and then I started going to the Spiller guy's house and looking at the Hemi Cuda and He left me. I drove it, I worked a little bit, I fixed some things and we basically made a deal, I think it was for $2,500, so I told my dad and he was mad that I sold the roadrunner in '73, so I told my dad we found it.

I found something else and he said well I'll come down and look at you and he walked around and saw Hemi Cuda in the shaker so he looked at that and staring at it said Hema CUDA what the hell is he? and I said that doesn't mean anything, don't even worry about it, it's nothing, he said, uh, look, this is, this is, Hemi again, you're not going to get this car, you're not going to get this car, so I had the roadrunner for that summer of '73 and then I took it to college that sophomore year and then during the summer after sophomore year and the first half of junior year, then I sold it and then I bought the silver '71 Hemi Cuda that It worked wonderfully.

I got sixteen seventeen miles per gallon on that trip to California. I can show you that I have all the records, we kept records of every gas stop and all the mileage for that trip. This is one of my many engine volumes and trace numbers. I started doing this in 1976 when I first became a police officer and the FBI taught a class that focused on Harley Davidson motorcycle fraud and they taught us how to get these engine numbers and chassis numbers on Harleys and that caused It made me think, man, all these parts that I've had my hands on, I need to start going through them and making sure everything's right, so I started doing that, so I've got over 40 years of this kind of stuff. numbers of almost all high performers.

I never did anything outside of the 318, just different engine numbers, trans numbers, and body numbers. I started doing this on my own, not thinking it was going to be something, not thinking I would make money from it. I never thought I would get anywhere. I did it for my own interest and I did it for my own education and I did it for myself to make sure I don't get duped into any kind of fraud, so here we are 40 years later. All of this has become important and the point of it all is that someone says, "Oh yeah, I can check the numbers.

I know how to do it, but if you didn't start a long time ago, it's going to be very difficult." I have accumulated all of them. This information shows you what happened at different times on the assembly line which cars had to have hand seals if they were hand seals what penny hand seals are supposed to look like ik Chrysler in what period of the line did they make this type of Having this amount of information is what helps me authenticate cars and that's another big part of my business: I authenticate drivetrains and cars, so this helps me a lot with that and by having all of this we also know all the anomalies in the that the factory was involved and then 91 I left with a couple of us and we started our own accident investigation business.

We were expert witnesses in court for accident investigation cases. Yeah, how long did it take them to get into the restaurant business so what? It happened well, the restoration business just transformed from working on cars and then working on friends' cars and then, you know, we started getting known and, you know, judging a little bit and now we're back in the '80s. So I was still working full time, but doing this kind of thing part time and I still had the accident reconstruction business, so you know, that progressed over, you know, 10 or 15 years and it became more and more busy around 2008.

I got a little tired of the legal system, I was already sick of lawyers and depositions and this business was really growing so play it, so I said okay I'll retire from that and just do cars full time, well , this is our parts room and this is a very small sample of the numbers that I have, these are original tires dated 1969, they are there for 812 cars, this is just you bring them here, same thing, here, everything what's here. No, there's nothing playing back here. I used to have a part time business that was almost a second full time job, so you didn't keep any cars from the old days, no problem, oh no, I always bought and sold.

I liked it all. I've had cars, I've lost count now, but it's been over 90 months of cars that I finally owned. I've had a little bit of everything. One thing, I've never owned two Hemi convertibles, but other than that, I've had nice ones. pretty much anything you can name, I guess Roger Gibson and I connected in the late eighties, we became friends through a technology article he wrote in a magazine, that's how we became friends and connected, like that that he and I have been in the business. I started the parts business around 92, so it's been over 25 years for the parts business and he and I have helped each other and restored the restoration work techniques that we have developed.

Rogers' restoration business is Roger Gipson Auto Restoration. My restaurant business is American performance. and our parts business is car restoration, supplying parts for all Mopars, yeah that's all I know, that's all I'll do, I just don't know anything else, oh so what are we going to do do here? You know, we're not going to finish. higher rpm, so we'll drive it down the highway, take a leisurely ride to a good place to take some photos in this car, low mileage, original, nothing changed, right, yeah, have you seen a better one? It really looks like a car, it's hard to beat the man, especially with that rubber bumper.

This thing is amazing. This will be a 69 Hemi super V. It is a completely original engine. in 69 it's also a super Track Pack car and we're going to change in about 3500, which is a 69 direct drive starter motor, direct drive stuff that you