[Hal Copple]

ah, and i remember back in spring, 82, i was finishing a fellowship in Denver, and was about to be assigned to Ft. Bragg, finally actually making some money. After so many years of tight living, i was ready to buy a real car again.

I wanted a Delorean. So i drove one at a Denver dealer
; of course, not much power, but back then a "Vette had something like 160 hp anyway.

I tried to talk my wife into doing it, but she was just not ready to take on a car loan, so regretfully (at the time), i couldn't make it happen. I think it was about $27K??

But i did get a near new TR-8, with lots of Huffaker racing stuff on it. Loved it, nice throaty exhaust, tons of torque, loved it with all my heart, rollbar, etc.

Unfortunately, about a year later, had a fuel leak, and burned in my garage in quarters, taking the garage off the end of our quarters at Ft. Bragg.

Then, i wanted to replace it with a '66 GT-350 up in NC i heard about, but my wife beat me to it, she got a nice little handsome Old's Cutlass, those pretty ones of the early '80''s. I was demoted to the Vanagon, she got the Cutlass.

It was another decade, in '90, before i got another performance car, my AWD Turbo Eclipse. Which was a fine, hi-tech car for the time, but one day, up in Charlotte about 7 years ago, i wanted to merge in front of one of those 300 HP Northstar Cadillacs, and couldn't out pull him, so vowing to never let that happen again, put on a big turbo, lots of performance parts, and cranked that little 2 liter up to about 300 Hp or so, sorta like a handsome Evo.

Which went to Canada when i got my SPF four years ago. In which my daughter and i drove about 150 miles today, up to the Olthoff's and back. While there, she sat in one of Bob's red SPF Coupes, looking all cool and so pretty with that blond hair of hers. She is off for four months in Italy monday, she said it would be nice to have that Coupe to run down to Rome next week!!!