Badlands Classic Car Show draws big crowds in Medora

Jason R. O'Day, The Dickinson Press, N.D.
·2 min read

Jun. 27—MEDORA, N.D. — The 2022 Badlands Classic Car Show was held Saturday in Chimney Park. Dozens of classic car and truck owners showed off their vintage rides, and hundreds more came to see them.

Mark Fehr, of Dickinson, showed off his 1969 Dodge Charger. He bought the vehicle in 1981 for $1,000.

"It was a good deal back then," Fehr said, explaining that he's put a lot of work into it over the years. "After that I had to stick a new motor in it because that was bad. I had to get a paint job because the fenders were bad. Then one-quarter panel was a different color, so we ended up painting the whole thing."

The renovations didn't end there.

"They had shag carpeting all over the place: the back deck, floor boards, center console. It was all orange shag. Once we started ripping things apart and putting the right stuff in I realized, 'Hey! I've got a Flinstone car.' There was a hole in the floor," he said. "But there's a company called

Year One

that you can buy panels, cut that part out and I had somebody weld it in."

He said in the process of all this he learned some history about how these cars were used in the 70s.

"It had a center console that was originally long like this one but when I bought it, it was short one. I couldn't understand why. They said back then, the girlfriends would sit on the console and then they would break them up because it was all plastic. So they just kept part of it where the shifter was at," he said.

Fehr added that he's loyal to Dodge.

"If it's not Dodge, I don't drive it," he said.

It's been a reliable car, but did run into some early issues driving on Highway 10 near the railroad tracks in Richardton.

"I bet you I didn't have it more than a month and I was driving from Dickinson to Hebron... Just as I was going into the curve, my rear end locked up and down in the ditch I went. So I walked to Hebron to get a wrecker from Hebron Motors. He came out and took it to my house. I ripped the rear end out, put a new one in and away we went again," he said. "No damage at all, just my shorts got filled. It did sort of scare me because I wasn't expecting that."