Jacksonville MOPAR man's reputation of meticulous restorations of old cars

Jacksonville.com: Jacksonville MOPAR man's reputation of meticulous restorations of old cars

By Dan Scanlan

Jacksonville MOPAR man's reputation of meticulous restorations of old cars
Chuck Smith's love of MOPAR is all over his muscle car-filled AWR Restorations garage off Commonwealth Avenue, from a Plum Crazy 1970 Dodge Charger R/T to the Sublime 1971 Dodge Super Bee.

There's even a MOPAR joke in the airplane-shaped pedal car hung in one corner, as Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote drops an Acme bomb on the (beep-beep!) Road Runner on a poster below.

You see, MOPAR is the MOtor PARts and service arm of Chrysler, synonymous with its muscle cars of the 1960s through today. MOPAR has been legendary in NASCAR as well, from Richard "The King" Petty winning 200 races, most in Plymouths and Dodges, to the five Dodge Charger-shaped racers in Saturday's Coke Zero 400 at Daytona.

A MOPAR was a teenage Smith's first — a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner. Now, dozens of cars later, skills he started learning to keep that Road Runner running have led to a busy career restoring others' muscle cars.

And the man who once owned seven MOPARS at one time? He has none now, and that's just fine with him.

"That's the bad thing about a car guy, especially if he does it for a living," he said. "If you have a car that needs work, the last thing you want to do is work on it because you do it eight hours a day. ... I am having fun working on other people's cars and helping them."

Smith's restorations are so meticulous they even include the paint marks assembly line workers put on cars to make sure the right parts were installed down the line. That's why legendary drag racer "Big Daddy" Don Garlits gave Smith's 1971 Plymouth GTX a Best of Show at a recent show at his Ocala museum. That Dodge Super Bee won Garlits awards as well.

"It is very nice to have someone make sure a car is restored to save them for future generations," Garlits said. "I like the authenticity of them and the great pains he takes to put them back the way the way were made."

Smith credits his brother's muscle cars, such as a 1970 Dodge ("awesome car; wish he still had it!") Challenger R/T, for starting his interest almost 40 years ago in Dunkirk, N.Y. Working at a gas station at age 16, he kept wrenching until he joined the Navy at age 23. That brought him to Jacksonville, where he mustered out four years later and worked for years at a company that made convertibles for General Motors, then a carpet pad maker and a wire and cable company.

Cars were still part of his life.

"From when I was 16 until about eight years ago, I have had 47 MOPARs," he said. "I worked on other people's cars and I drag-raced them out of Pecan Park, and unfortunately out here on Imeson Road late at night."

He started full-time car restoration about nine years ago, opening a tiny shop on Leon Road. His current 8-year-old operation is now filled with cars in various stages of restoration, such as a 1968 Dodge Dart convertible starting its new life, to the award-winning Sublime Super Bee with Air Grabber hood scoop that rises to show painted teeth. Then there's the freshly painted gold coupe.

It's no muscle car, more like the regular family cars that Chrysler based its monsters on. This 1974 Plymouth Duster is the proverbial "driven to church on Sunday" grandma's car, delivered June 25, 1974, to Fern Casteel in Illinois. She was Clifford Claypool's grandmother, and it's the first car he ever drove, at age 14.

Laid up for 12 years and getting dusty and rusty, the car has only 29,000 miles on the clock, and Claypool wants it restored to showroom new as an homage to his grandmother. So starting three years ago, Smith has redone the Duster's body and found an original yellow-green snakeskin vinyl top, like the car carried new.

Other work replicates the assembly line finish the car had when new. That includes dribbled black sealant on the firewall, the "G-60/15" crayon mark inside the trunk lid that told what spare tire size the car should have, and black tape securing a wire on a trunk hinge.

"That's what people want, especially if they restore a car. They want it factory original right down to the QA marks and down to the messiness," Smith said. "Of course they want a beautiful paint job, but they still want the factory markings. This is actually the original tape that they used back then."

That level of restoration is important, said Garlits, whose museum houses many classic cars, as well as dragsters and racing memorabilia.

"It lets people see how the car was when it was at the showroom," Garlits said. "Some people are adamant about them that way, and it is nice when you know where to put the crayon marks."

That also means Smith has to research every aspect of how these cars were built, plus dissect each one to see how it was built.

"This car alone [the GTX], I probably have 1,500 pictures of this car coming apart, going back together and some oddities that some of the mega-shops don't even know about," Smith said.

"I love his work. He is meticulous in his detail and it is unbelievable the research he does," Claypool said. "It is slow work, but you can't rush quality."

Claypool plans to reveal his grandmother's restored car at the Cruisin' Mopars of Jacksonville show Saturday, Oct. 1, at the Baymeadows Junction shopping center.

The rest of AWR Restorations is filled with odds and ends of automobilia, from trophies near freshly painted engines to parts stored overhead on a balcony.

And not every project is MOPAR. Smith says he loves classic Chevrolet Camaros and Ford Mustangs. He even has a former U.S. Post Office Jeep that he's fixing for a customer.