My story goes a little something like this. I can remember watchin knight rider, who doesnt, that show rocked ass! Anyway, I loved kitt, but I never realized that it was a firebird. fast forward a couple of years. my dad would buy all sorts of off the wall cars, like 70's bmw's and vw scirroco's. All huge piles of garbage, in fact I dont think more than two of them ever left the driveway under their own power
. Now I'm in middle school and my friend curt will not shut up about camaro's and IROC's. I start to look at them and I realize they are pretty neat looking so I decided that I like camaro's. enter high school, gonna get my permit sophomore year so I better start looking for a car.Well, by now my dad had split so It looked like I was up ****s creekas far as automotive guidance. Enter my stepdad 8) . GM mechanic for years, owned his own shop, HUGE chevy nut. with his help I went and looked at an 85 camaro. when we got there and looked at it, it was a total pile! interior ripped apart, literally. the steering wheel was missing, it had 4 different rims on it and the hood was all ****ed up. It didnt even run. definitly not worth the $550 they wanted, so we walked away from that one. a few months went by and I was beginning to think that all the good cars were impossible to find. Curt already had his 86 IROC, but I was still car-less. one sunday morning I went out and got the paper (star ledger) and I opened it up to the automotive classified section, just like I had been for about a year. I looked under the antiques and classics section...nothing. time for the chevy section...BINGO! first listing, 1976 camaro: v8, auto, runs, needs work, $550. I called the guy immediatly and asked him a ton of questions about the car. It had been sitting for a year, but he kept it in running condition. I went to look at it two days later after school. I personally have never seen a car with so much rust on it
. luckily, most of it was just surface rust, but the one rear quarter was gonna need to be replaced. the tranny had a leak too, but that was the least of my worries. I thought the car was a wreck, but my stepdad was really excited about the thing. we talked him down to $450 and I took it home three days later. Once the restoration began, I slowly began to see what was so special about these cars. I guess you get a better respect for them when you have them totally apart and sweat and bleed for the sake of saving one from the wrecker. It was my first car and I'll never forget all the great times I had with it. everyone in high school repected my car. they didnt just think it was neat looking or cool cause it was old, everyone had genuine respect for that car and for what I had to go through to get it like that. in a way, that camaro made me who I am today. before that car entered my life, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Now I'm a mechanic thanks to that life changing car. I had to sell it a few months ago. It was suprisingly hard on my. not so much right after it drove away, but a few days later it really set in that the car was gone. I was lucky enought to have sold it to tim who I know will take great care of it. It will also get raced regularly and I am more than fine with that! After that I got an 87 GTA which totally blew me away as far as overall performance. and soon I'll be the owner of a low mileage 84 HO Trans Am. I dont know what my plans are for that car yet, but rest assured, no one will be disappointed no matter wich direction I go. 8)