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Manhattan Mopar: This GTS Dart has been a New York Daily Driver for 40 Years

 

Alex Harsley is in his ’70s. He laughs a lot and talks with his hands, and has a million good stories. He is a photographer and long-time resident of the East Village but was born in the South in 1938, and came to New York when he was about 11. Even as a child he was fascinated by the speed and diversity of the city. He honed his mechanical skills on hopped-up roller skates, bicycles and motorcycles. “They aren’t all the same,” he said. “You look around you at who is going fast and you say, ‘what did he get? What did he do, that makes him so fast? I want that.’”

 

As he grew up, Alex discovered his talent for photography, and despite an interruption for a stint with Uncle Sam in the ’60s, he always managed to find a job that made use of his skills with a camera. Along the way was a series of cars. “I wanted a Cobra, or maybe a Jag, but that wasn’t possible. I wound up with a Plymouth, later I had a Pontiac, a Cadillac. Big engines, multi carb. I used to drive so fast, weaving in and out of traffic on the expressway. One time it was snowing, and I was really moving, that Plymouth, it would move. Eventually I slowed down and there he (a cop) was behind me. I was like, ‘If I’d known he was behind me I wouldn’t have let him catch up!’”

 

When he was free of military duties, Alex devoted himself more to his art. He started a gallery in the early ’70s, interested in forming a community of like-minded artists and photographers. The Dart came on the scene in 1974, when Alex, temporarily carless, passed it on the street being prepped by its owner for the junkyard. He laughed while recalling the purchase for us, “I said, ‘How much do you want?’ and he said ‘$500′, and that was right in my price range so I bought it and drove it home. It was really in bad shape. I was driving to find out what was wrong with it, and everything was wrong with it. It took me ten years to…not restore it, but just to get it to where it would get me where I needed to go.”

 

Read more: http://blogs.hotrod.com/manhattan-mopar-this-gts-dart-has-been-a-new-york-daily-driver-for-40-years-88123.html#ixzz3ELb88gmU

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