I need a hobby to keep me from going crazy!
Over the last 12 years I have put too much effort and energy into my career and not enough into having fun. I have a muscle disease that is slowly limiting the kind of fun I can have as I get older, so I picked a hobby I loved years ago, fixing up an old car.
One of my favorite cars was my 1969 Camaro RS that I sold to buy a minivan 21 years ago. I had that car for 9 years and loved working on it and driving it. I decided that I wanted to try to find another 1969 Camaro to fix up, but after investigating the price of these cars today, I decided that there is no way I can afford another 1969 Camaro; even the worst condition piece of junk with no options was selling for $12,000. Nice ones were all in the $60,000 and above price range.
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| My 1969 Camaro at the Peach Days car show in Brigham City 1987 |
The next car that came to mind was a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am. I owned one of those for a few years in the early 1980s and really liked it.
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| My 1979 Trans Am in front of my parent's house in 1981. |
I looked online for a 1979 Trans Am, but only found really high priced ones or really junky beat up ones. I kept looking and finally found a local ad for a 1978 Pontiac Trans Am that looked really nice and the price sounded unusually low; I had to check it out.
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| KSL.com online add December 2012 |
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| Photo of the Trans Am I would buy from 2010 |
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| Photo of the Trans Am I would buy from 2010 |
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| Photo of the Trans Am I would buy from 2010 |
This car was owned by a car collector and he said he was retiring and selling his collection now. On December 4, 2012 two of my sons and I drove down to see the car, it looked beautiful. The paint had obviously been redone and the interior looked pretty good too. The engine compartment looked decent although it was missing the air conditioning compressor, brackets, hoses, and also the air cleaner was missing its cold air intake ducting.
The snowflake wheels looked wrong to me since they were painted gold. I did not remember them being painted that way, I thought someone was lazy and painted the whole wheel rather than take the time to mask off all the ribbing.
We started the car, there was a huge exhaust leak that made the car sound like an old truck. I asked the owner if everything worked, he assured me that everything except the air conditioning worked. He said the power windows were a little slow and that the drivers door was hard to shut.
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| The Trans Am, the evening I purchased it in Lindon Utah |
Being a master General Motors technician for many years and also have worked on these cars for a living many years ago, I decided that I would fix whatever was wrong with the car and that I would buy it, but not for the full asking price. After some "Pawn Stars" style negotiating, I was able to purchase the car for $9,000 instead of the $12,000 asking price. I thought I did well, but I would later wonder if I paid too much.
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| Counting the Cash |
My son counted out the cash, we loaded up the air conditioning compressor, brackets and hoses, snapped a few photos and pulled the car outside for the 60 mile drive home at night.
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| Me in front of my newly purchased 1978 Trans Am |
On the drive home we had no license plates, the turn signals did not flash properly, and the headlights were aimed incorrectly that high beam looked like low beam. The dash lights kept flickering on and off. As we drove home we could hear a couple of parts fall off the car as we were traveling down the freeway. To my relief, we made it home, avoided the highway patrol and parked it in my garage (I was insured). I plan on restoring this car to like new condition with all the original equipment. No hot rodding, no modifications.
I needed a hobby, I finally had one! Let the fun begin!
