"Paul's Shop"

I do not know the exact name of this shop or the name of the man who owns it. All I know is either his last name or first name is Paul. This shop is in Yazoo City, Mississippi... the same place that I bought my '69 Charger. Larry (the guy who I bought my Charger from) told me that this guys shop caught on fire and burned to the ground. I said, "Yeah, so?" He then told me what cars were inside the shop while it was burning! I just about broke down!!! On Tuesday Nov. 13, 2001 we decided to go and check out everything and see what was left.
As we pulled into the parking lot my jaw hit the floorboard of Larry's van! I knew it was going to be pretty bad but I didn't think it was going to be THIS bad! We parked the van and I grabbed my camera and hurried to the first car that I saw. It was a 1970 Dodge Charger with a 440 cubic inch engine. The car was once solid red without any stripes or a vinyl roof. One thing that kind of ties this Charger to my Charger is that the deck lid (aka: trunk lid) that you see here on the car originally came on my Charger. Right now my Charger has the deck lid to this car, and it's still red! The man who owns this car also has the original white bucket seats and fold down arm rest that came with my car. They were not on this car because you could tell that the seats in this car were '70 seats and not '69's. From what I understand, this car was in really good shape and was taken to car shows occasionally. I couldn't tell exactly what it was that fell on the roof of the car during the fire because, as you can tell, it was already pulled out of the shop when we got there. I'm pretty sure that an I-beam landed on it lengthwise. During the fire, the car got so hot that it melted the door handles off the car along with a lot of the trim and other soft metal pieces!

After looking at the Charger for a while, I went inside what was left of the shop. I could tell that there was another car under a pile left behind after the roof of the shop collapsed. From a distance I couldn't tell what kind of car it was and then once I got close enough, I could tell that it was a 1971-72 Plymouth Road Runner. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! I noticed that the hood was off the car and the engine was out. I don't know where the engine is now, but I know that the hood is behind the shop (I found it there afterwards). I was afraid to get too close to the car because I didn't want the rest of the roof to cave in on me, so I couldn't really tell how the driver's side looked.

After I left the inside of the shop I wondered around behind the shop and found more goodies (that were unharmed by the fire). The first thing I noticed was a tan 1967 Plymouth GTX off to the side (sorry, no picture). I then made my way through grass that was five feet tall and found an mid-60'sDodge with a snorkle hood scoop. I bet this car was once a mean little street racer. It still had a set of old slickes on the rear!

Then, setting in front of the Dodge was something that you don't see too often. Actually, you rarely ever see them! It was a 1968 Plymouth 'Cuda two door coupe. You can usually find the fastback models but the coupes are harder to find.

As I looked at that car, something behind the fence caught my eye too. It was a very rare '68 Dodge Coronet 500 Convertible!!!! If it had a smallblock in it then there were less than 400 of these things built!! If this is a small block car, then that means there's actually 2 of these rare cars within and hours drive of each other!!! My body shop teacher has one and didn't realize how rare it was until I told him. But that wasn't the only car that caught my eyes... if you look really closely, you can see a primer red 1970 Dodge Charger in the background! I felt like I was in heaven!!! You can see the Charger best in the 'Cuda picture.

May the burned cars Rust In Peace!
This page was created on Nov. 16, 2001