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Mike Heredia

Forum ID: bad58mike

CCC Member since: February 27, 2006

Location: Huntington Beach, California, USA

My Obsession with Christine began at the age of 12, I remember that day clearly. It was a hot summer afternoon in 1992, my brother and I had been helping my neighbor with yard work. I was only a kid then and like most kids it did not take much to make one happy. I remember she had this huge video collection, each week she would lend my brother and I movies for helping her with the work. Sure enough one of those movies was our beloved "Christine." I was blown away, I had never in my life seen such a cool film. From the very start of the movie it was love at first sight. I remember the opening scene with Christine rolling down the assembly line with "Bad to the Bone" blaring in the backround, what an entrance! Since watching the movie I have been forever a slave to Christine, I told myself that someday I would have that car. I remember soon after watching the movie I had to make my own Chrsitine. I was 12 at the time so I did the next best thing, I had built me a beach cruiser Christine. I used those old 60's Schwin beach cruiser frames and painted it red and white and put those white wall tires with those big chrome fenders, I even had a white vinyl seat. It was the closest thing I could get to Christine then. It was a fun bike I wish I had a picture somewhere, I even attached a light in front to simulate Christines headlights. I used to turn it on at night and chase the kids in my street. I had some imagination then. I also remember looking for a model of the 58 Plymouth but could not find one anywhere in 92' I finally found a model, it was the Richard Earle Revell model kit based on the Christine drag car. It was good enough for me since well it was pretty much the only Christine model I could find. So I bought two and built my own restored and unrestored Christines. I went on and on some years just talking about Christine buying other plastic models drawing pictures and so forth. As I became older I would almost forget about Christine, being busy in my adolesants and all. Until one day in my early twenties in 2003 my love interest in Christine was resurrected. I was watching late night T.V. one night and sure enough they were showing Christine, all my fond memories of here were instantly back with me, thats when the search for my beloved 58 Plymouth HT began. I was looking in old car magazines, Hemmings motor news, all kinds of places , calling wrecking yards and they'd all laugh at me telling me that they had not had those cars in their yards in decades. I was determined and kept on searching, I had been relativly new at ebay at the time and thought I'd give ebay a try, I'd probably watched ebay for month's Id eventually see some 57 and 58 occasioally pop up but was always outbidded or ended at really high amounts of money to were I could not afford. Finally a few months later had found a resonable 57 plymouth HT, I knew it was a 57 but could use this car as a founadtion to build my Christine Clone. I bought her for $7500 she was a little rough but solid. I was so excited when she finally arrived, the journey to have her shipped felt like 2 months even though it was only 10 days. I thought I would have this car forever, it was the greatest feeling when she arrived, I had never seen one of these cars before. This car would become a great learning experience for me in that I practically took the car apart rebuilding her from a 57 to a 58 Plymouth over time with many ebay parts. My original plans were to finsih restoring the car but financial obligations would not allow. One morning in 2005 I had found yet anoter 58 Plymouth HT for sale on the Forward look web site, this time I was really excited, the Gentleman whom I bought it from had it in real nice shape, the car had been recently restored and garaged kept. I bought her as a 1958 Plymouth Savoy and was well aware of that, but the canvas in my mind knew that this car would make the perfect canidat for my Christine Clone, I had just nearly all the cosmetic parts to convert her from a savoy to a Christine/Fury. So the decision was made to sell the first one and buy the restored one, this made more sense to me, I knew that I could quickly modify this car in to Christine. Finally in October of 2005 she arrived the perfect Christine canidate I've been waiting my whole life for. I was in disbelief that this car was so cherry the underside was completly rust free just painted nice and shiny black. Literally as soon as I drove her off the truck I began to remove the savoy trim and rear continental kit, she would be picked up the next morning and off to the body shop to be made over into Christine, I had all the original savoy body holes welded up and resurfaced, I had the car completly repainted to be ready for the install of the bodyside sportone once she got home. The shop did a fantastic job re painting her. I spent the next few weekends doing the final touches, I personally installed the bodyside sportone and moldings, it was scary but fun, alot of patience is required for this. I'm still to this day working on her and continually working every last detail into building my very own Christine. Thanks to the help of my very good friend Moochie Chaser (Martin) I've been able to use his film car as a reference to build my Christine. I find myself lost in the garage for hours just staring at her, I have to pich myself sometimes to know that I'm really there. I just can't belive I finally have my very own Restored Christine!

Bad58mike

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