Posts tagged vintage cars

We were given a wonderful opportunity to team up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota this past January when we heard about Matthew’s wish to have his 1968 Dodge Charger restored. And after over 5 months of hard work, Matthew’s Charger is finally complete. We felt this partnership was a great fit and couldn’t wait to help out, so on January 12^th, we set off for Northern Minnesota to pick up the car and see what kind of shape it was in.

You can imagine Matthew’s excitement when he found out we were there to grant the wish that he had patiently been waiting over a year for. We trailered the Charger back to our Minnetonka Ford store where we immediately began with a mechanical evaluation. We made sure to document the process of the restoration through a series of blog posts with videos and photos. You can check it out here. The story created a lot of buzz throughout the community and we were excited to be able to share it with everyone. We soon realized the amount of dedication and compassion that is present within the Morrie’s community amongst employees when they began volunteering their time and energy to help with the restoration.

It has been a long and rewarding process to help make Matthew’s wish come true and we were so thrilled to be able to finally surprise him this past weekend when he was least expecting it. We planned to have Matthew and his family visit for the weekend to tour a few of Morrie’s vehicles. He had no idea that towards the end of his tour, he would find his 1968 Dodge Charger, fully restored and finally complete. We held a small event with members of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Morrie’s employees and vendors that worked on the restoration, and Matthew’s family.

The following morning, Matthew got to show his new Charger off at MN C&C , a car event that Morrie’s sponsors the first Saturday of each month throughout the summer. Matthew’s Charger looked great amongst all the other classic and exotic vehicles at the event and sure got a lot of attention. Stay tuned for a separate blog post highlighting the June C&C event and a special segment featuring Matthew’s appearance.

With over 600 hours of work, more than 40 employees, and a dozen different vendors, Matthew’s wish finally became a reality. All the time and hard work paid off when we all saw the look on Matthew’s face Friday night when he first laid eyes on the car. We were so proud to be able to work with the Make-a-Wish Foundation to help make this wish come true and we truly appreciate the opportunity to give back to our community and a great family like Matthew’s.

Thanks to WCCO Channel 4 News for covering Matthew’s story and the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Minnesota for allowing us the opportunity to grant this wish.