An emotionally charged reunion

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This article was published 28/04/2022 (1408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KILLARNEY — Gary and Ann Magwood still can’t believe they managed to track down their old 1970 Dodge Charger, having originally sold their treasured muscle car to carve out a steady family life on the farm.

But after more than three decades of wondering where the Dodge ended up, the couple stumbled upon the same vehicle in 2014 through blind luck and have been busy restoring it ever since.

Talking to the Sun earlier this week, Gary and Ann both said the Charger serves as more than just a nostalgic blast from the past.

The car was a consistent presence in the Killarney couple’s dating life and even played an important role once they officially tied the knot in 1975.

“On our honeymoon, we actually decided to drive from here to Boissevain to the States and then to Devils Lake and Grand Forks and then to Winnipeg,” Ann said on Wednesday. “That was our big holiday.”

Despite it being the source of so many cherished memories, Gary and Ann eventually came to realize they had to sell the Charger once their farming operation got underway around 1978, since they needed a vehicle that could fulfil the needs of the new business and a growing family.

“After that, we just wondered where it ended up, whether someone had fixed it up or it had been scrapped,” Gary said.

The couple wouldn’t get their answer until the fall of 2014, when Gary was scrolling through the auto section of Kijiji and spotted a 1970 Charger that looked suspiciously like the model he bought from Chapman Motors all those years ago.

Having kept the original bill of sale, Gary was able to cross reference his old car’s serial number with the new owner and confirm that it was an exact match.

After a lot of thought, the couple eventually decided to purchase the car once again in June 2015 and sink some money into bringing the Charger back to its former glory.

“It was something important in our lives, being our honeymoon car and the car we dated in,” Gary said. “So we figured we could get it done.”

This rebuild gradually unfolded throughout the next couple years, when the pair paid some mechanics in Warren to install a brand-new automatic transmission and swap the original motor out for a 6.4-litre crate engine.

“It’s not like the old days when we would lift the hood, put a stick in the carburetor to hold the chokes open so you could start it,” Gary said. “Now you have the fuel-injected motor where you turn the key and ‘boom.’ It’s just up and going and there’s no fooling around.”

In terms of the interior work, completed in Winnipeg Beach, the couple sought to rebuild the dash and install some new leather seats, while making room for some modern amenities like air conditioning.

And despite changing the exterior colour from a forest green to a dark green, Gary and Ann wanted to maintain the classic second-generation Charger body type that became so popular thanks to entertainment properties like “The Dukes of Hazzard” TV show.

“If you see it coming down the road, it’s still a 1970 Charger with a few small modifications on the outside where the exhaust pipe comes out,” Gary said.

All that time and money eventually paid off in 2019, when the husband-wife team were able to show off their new and improved muscle car at Winnipeg’s World of Wheels convention.

While the pair have kept driving to a minimum due to some lingering electrical issues, they are hoping to get those problems ironed out in the coming weeks.

This way, the couple can finally use the restored Charger for some long-distance trips, including a stop in Selkirk for their grandson’s upcoming high school graduation.

Despite everything that has changed over the past four decades, Gary and Ann are just happy to have the Charger back in their lives now that they are older and in various stages of retirement, even if that comes with its own set of challenges.

“We’ve still got the same excitement,” Ann said. “But now the grandkids like to be in there, too, so we just tell them to keep their feet off the seats.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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