Print edition: 
Doug Marshall says there's one challenge that faces every fan of high performance 1960s vintage Dodges and Plymouths.
"It's really hard to find MoPars that aren't all hacked up," he said.
Many of those cars were gutted and modified to race and were pretty much used up in the process, he explained. Add to that the fact that there are far fewer reproduction pieces made for Chrysler brand muscle cars than for GM or Ford muscle cars, and owning a nice '60s MoPar becomes a bit of a distinction.
In Marshall's case, he owns not one, but two — one to drag race and the other a classic, fully restored street cruiser.
The race car is a 1963 Dodge 440 two-door sedan known as "The Savage." It is named in tribute to a friend, John Hatfield of Mount Vernon, Ohio, who raced a '63 Max Wedge Plymouth under that name many years ago. "He would let my wife and me race that car," said Marshall.
In fact, he tried to track Hatfield's Plymouth down and buy it, but never could quite accomplish that.
Then one day a friend at work brought in an advertisement in a racing periodical and asked if the car being offered might satisfy Marshall's quest.
"It was originally a 6-cylinder little old lady's car... she sold it to a guy who converted it to a race car... in 1980. You never see these cars for sale... these were just killer cars," Marshall said.
He wasted no time leaving a message for the owner, who lived in Washington state.
"It was three months before he called me back," Marshall said.
After doing some wheeling and dealing over the phone and carefully checking out photos of the Dodge, a deal was struck and Marshall had the car transported to Wichita. "Luckily, it was exactly as the guy described it," he said.
The Slant 6 engine had been supplanted by a 440 cubic inch V-8 that produces around 450 horsepower, thanks to factory high performance heads, a MoPar Direct Connection intake and Purple solid lifter cam. The engine is bored out to 447 cubic inches and uses a Holley 850 cfm double pumper carb and a set of Hedman headers. The transmission is a race-built Chrysler 727 automatic.
A set of aluminum racing pistons and some beefier connecting rods will soon be installed at Patterson Racing, and with the help of custom-built traction bars and rear suspension modifications by Holzman Race Cars, Marshall expects the car to perform even better than the 11.80 second, 115 mph best quarter mile it has recorded so far.
"I am not putting wheelie bars on it. I am going to stand it up and see what happens," he said with a broad grin.
In an effort to lighten the front end as much as possible, he is currently building a carbon fiber front bumper and splash pan for it, to be mounted on aluminum bumper brackets.
Marshall got permission from his friend to paint "The Savage" on the doors of the Dodge. And because he lost his wife, Barb, to cancer several years ago, he had her name applied to the passenger-side window in tribute.
"Every pass I make, she goes with me," he said.
The other MoPar in Marshall's garage is a beautifully restored off-white 1965 Plymouth Satellite two-door hardtop.
Marshall said he has virtually every piece of paper associated with the car, from the day when a woman who was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force bought it at a Washington D.C. dealership, to the sticker placed on it the day it was driven to her funeral, to a thick stack of invoices accumulated during its extensive restoration.
"It's a pretty well documented car," he says with considerable understatement. The Plymouth shows only 46,000 original miles on the odometer and was always garaged, says Marshall, who is the fourth owner of the car.
It is equipped with a 383 V8, a floor-shifted 727 automatic transmission and 15-inch police-issue steel wheels.
The man he bought the car from had the engine, transmission and rear end overhauled and the body repainted in its original color.
"Everything except the interior was rebuilt," he said, showing off the nearly showroom-fresh two-tone upholstery.
"For some reason, after he got it done, he turned around and didn't want it," Marshall said. He obligingly bought the car in 2009 and brought it back to Wichita from Columbia, Mo. These days the Plymouth seldom leaves the protection of his garage.
"I get really nervous about driving stuff where it can get scratched up," Marshall confessed. "I mainly bought it because you just can't find 'em and it is such a nice car," he added.
