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Our Fans<br />
Toy Time<br />
It was love at first sight for<br />
Marc Rozman and his Charger.<br />
Marc Rozman enjoys playing with — er, restoring — his 1969 Charger<br />
My wife told me, when our kids<br />
are older, you can buy another<br />
toy,” says Marc Rozman,<br />
reminiscing about his prized 1969<br />
Dodge Dart GTS convertible that<br />
he was forced to sell years ago. Well,<br />
the kids are grown and married, and<br />
guess who’s got a new toy?<br />
Interestingly, it was his wife,<br />
Darlene, who spotted the ad for a<br />
red ’69 Dodge Charger RT/SE in the<br />
fall of 2000. “The guy e-mailed<br />
me a picture,” says Marc Rozman,<br />
a <strong>UAW</strong> Local 412 member and<br />
a dynamometer operator at the<br />
Daimler<strong>Chrysler</strong> Technology Center<br />
in Auburn Hills, Mich. “As I saw it<br />
roll across my screen, I had that ‘this<br />
is it’ gut feeling.”<br />
Marc Rozman’s favorite pastime:<br />
restoring his 1969 Dodge Charger.<br />
A professed lifelong car lover,<br />
Rozman has been with Daimler-<br />
<strong>Chrysler</strong> for 28 years, and his dad<br />
worked for the <strong>com</strong>pany before him.<br />
In fact, the family had a brand-new<br />
Charger when Rozman was a teenager.<br />
“For an 18-year-old, that was<br />
pretty cool,” he says.<br />
“As I saw it<br />
roll across my<br />
screen, I had<br />
that ‘this is it’<br />
gut feeling.”<br />
So when he spotted the classic muscle<br />
car, it was indeed “it,” and he has<br />
been gradually restoring it ever since.<br />
The car had nearly 100,000 miles on<br />
the odometer and was “pretty clean,”<br />
but Rozman has done some body<br />
work and replaced a few interior<br />
parts. “Only one part is not original,”<br />
says the 50-year-old avowed stickler<br />
for details, referring to an electric fuel<br />
pump tucked under the gas tank.<br />
In November, the 440 Magnum<br />
engine was out to bore the cylinders<br />
and restore the heads, but Rozman<br />
vows to have his Charger back on<br />
the road this year. “I want to drive it<br />
and enjoy it,” he says. About that,<br />
he’s not toying around.<br />
■<br />
— Bob Woods<br />
8 www.uawdcx.<strong>com</strong>
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