Eddie was able to luck into a NOS rear spoiler, but all he could find was the wing itself, and not the mounting kit that went with it. Anyhow, Eddie just happens to have his trunk open when this short dude wearing a red hat walks by and tells Eddie that he has the wrong spoiler mounting studs. Mind you, the car has been sitting there for two hours with the hood open and it would have scored a zillion points at any car show. Eddie opens the trunk for a second and a half and this dork tells him he has the wrong mounting studs.

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All of a sudden Eddie's eyes sort of roll back in his head and he makes this funny noise, like when you pick up a cat and squeeze it too hard. Now the dork never heard a noise like this before, so he thinks maybe Eddie didn't hear him or something. So he tells him again. "Your spoiler studs are wrong. You should have a recessed mounting plate and an alien head screw to adjust..."

Eddie makes that funny noise again--only louder, this time. Then he snaps. I mean the guy goes berserk BIG TIME. He grabs the jack handle from the trunk and slams down the lid. Then he starts screaming. "Yeah, sure the studs are wrong. Look, so's the spoiler wrong." And with that he comes down on the center of the spoiler with the jack handle.

Whack!

There's this sickening crunch and it seems like the entire Nationals gets quiet all of a sudden. Chunks of plastic are flying all over the place and Eddie starts screaming even louder. "Look." he yells, "Even the trunk is wrong." And the jack handle comes down on the trunk lid. The sound of metal caving in seems to echo off a hundred different places. Eddie gets wilder and even louder. A crowd starts forming as if pulled in by some giant vacuum cleaner. "The taillights are wrong." Crunch!!

At this point Eddie lunges with the jack handle for the dork in the red hat who is frozen to the spot in sheer terror. Luckily, for all concerned, about 10 guys jump on Eddie before he can do any more damage and they hold him until the cops and the medical dudes arrive to cart him off. We got Eddie's car back home for him, and a bunch of the guys are helping put things back together. We picked up a repro rear spoiler (the correct one) and the car is in the body shop to repair the trunk lid, taillight and rear panel. It could have been a lot worse.

In the meantime, does anyone out there have a lead on a set of original mounting studs for a '71 GTX rear spoiler?

Cliff Notes [12-8-04] And now for something a little different