Larry McHale has a thing for Roadrunners.
No, the 62-year-old Squamish retiree isn't a lover of the speedy and feathered Looney Tunes cartoon character, but rather an aficionado of the classic Plymouth muscle car built by Chrysler from 1968 to 1980.
"I've always been a fan," he said. "I had a 1969 Roadrunner when I was 18. It wasn't my first car, but it was my first hot car my first muscle car."
After almost a decade of owning the high-performance vehicle, McHale sold the car.
"I instantly regretted it," he said. "I always wanted to get another one."
Years later, McHale decided to share his passion with his son.
"When my son was 14, I decided to buy a car for him to ride around in," he said. "My friend had a 1970 Roadrunner that was a wreck. He actually found it in a barnyard underneath a boulder. The car was totally rotted inside and out."
But McHale wasn't daunted by the task.
"We didn't know how far we'd go with it, or how long it would take," he said. "But we basically stripped it down to nothing but bare metal."
That was the beginning of a 3 -year project.
"The further we got into the car, the more we wanted it to be really nice and almost original," he said. "We welded new floor boards, and my friend David Barnfield did all the fine body work and painted it in all original paint."
When the car was finally done, McHale had restored the abandoned vehicle to nearly pristine quality.
"The only thing not original was the engine," he said. "We bumped that up a bit. But when it was finished, it was just gorgeous."
The plan was to keep the car for a while, he said.
"Two weeks after we finished, we took the car to a big show in the U.S.," he said. "While we were there, a rich American guy asked me how much it would cost to buy the car. My son said it wasn't for sale, of course. But he kept asking and said, 'Name your price.'"
McHale agreed to exchange numbers with the insistent car lover, and after repeated phone calls, they finally relented and sold the newly restored vehicle.
"He paid a huge pile of money," McHale said. "It paid for the $30,000 restoration and we made a tidy profit."
But McHale still wanted a Roadrunner of his own.
"I got the urge to restore another one, but I never got around to it," he said. "I looked at a '69 Roadrunner in Fort McMurray but it was so rusted it wasn't worth it. Then I found a '68, but it was breaking my heart it wasn't a '69 like I had in my youth. So, I didn't end up doing anything with it."
Finally last summer, McHale spotted a coveted 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner for sale in California on the Internet already completely restored.
"I spent four months working on a deal for the car," he said. "In November, I finally got it."
It was a dream come full circle for a not-so-secret admirer of the wheels of his youth.
