As if you didn’t need another reason to head over the the Muscle Cars at the Strip event in Las Vegas, (MATS), here’s one more reason you need to be there. Some months ago, event promoter and coordinator Phil Painter ran across a hardcore Mopar guy who’s had a hard time of life in the last four years. Quinn Peterson was diagnosed with a very rare form of bone cancer three years ago after suffering with an increasingly sore shoulder for about a year before that. The cancer was so advanced, by the time they cut the massive tumors off, they ended up having to amputate his right arm. About a year ago, it came back, and resulted in seven more tumors having to be removed, and an awful lot of chemo and radiation treatments. Through it all, however, Quinn remained selfless, and in his own words, “I wasn’t gonna’ let this win. I wasn’t gonna’ let this control my life.” He was back in the gym only nine days after the amputation, he’s continued working throughout, and, he’s still driving his black Challenger almost daily! Inspired by Quinn’s attitude and his work he was doing with Children’s Cancer Charities, Phil decided they could do more. He got on the phone, and soon enough, he had a dark blue metallic 1966 Satellite that had been restified very nicely back in 2020, and that car will be raffled off at the MATS event on March 17, 2024, to some lucky Mopar person. Tickets are only $5, and you do not have to be present to win, but if you are, hey, you get to drive it home!
The car itself was sold new in Arizona and spent the rest of its life in SoCal, so this was a rust-free low-mileage car to begin with. The previous owner restored it back to dark blue metallic, the seats are the very dressy light blue metallic buckets, and this one is a console-shifted automatic. Originally a 318 car, the Satellite now sports a very low-mileage Bob Lambeck-built 383 with a host of mods and a stall converter as well in the TorqueFlite tranny. It rumbles, it roars, but she’ll still run just fine on pump gas and you can drive this thing coast-to-coast if you want thanks to the reasonable low gear ratio still in the 8-3/4” rear.
All of the money raised by this giveaway goes straight to the Children’s Cancer charities that Quinn selected, “My course is set, but, maybe something good can come out of all this. Maybe we can help some kids along the way.” That’s the kinda’ guy Quinn is, and that’s why Phil Painter jumped into the fray to make this happen. So, to buy your tickets for five bucks a pop, head over to www.matslv.com and follow the links, you’ll get there. There’s also more photos of the car posted there, and a link to a nice twenty-minute YouTube video of Quinn showing the car off, driving it around Vegas, and you get to see pretty much every area of the car. This one is for a seriously good cause, the tickets are dirt cheap, and you really can’t go wrong here. As we always say with these things, if we don’t win it, we hope one of our readers does! Good luck and get those tickets quick!