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Ever since I was a kid, I was obsessed with pictures of the car. We didn't have that many and most of them were blurry. Around the Champaign, IL area, the car was somewhat of a famous hot rod since several previous owners of the car before my dad were almost what you would call pioneers of the sport in this area. All kinds of stories have been told about the car and who did what to it. Dad said he had never lost a street race in the car. It was built up with some neat goodies for back then. 283/3-speed. Dual quads. Mickey Thompson Mags. Slicks. Sun Tach. Black Tuck-n-Roll upholstery with white piping. 25 Louver hood.
A few years ago, I did a massive search on the Internet trying to figure out whatever happened to it. Dad remembered the name of the kid who bought it but after a few hours of searching, I couldn't find anyone with that name. So I started trying different versions of the last name and finally got a hit on one name just outside of the Lansing Mi. area. I called the phone number. A gentleman answered the phone and I told him that he wouldn't know who I was but I was tracking down an old hot rod that my dad used to own and I was wondering if he knew anything about it. He replied that he was in fact was the guy who bought the car and that he still owns it. I was in shock. He went on to say that he had the car dipped and painted and that he was saving it for his sons to fix up. Not for sale. I was disappointed but not surprised. He had much more ownership and history with the car than my family ever did. Before I got off the phone with him, I asked if it would be okay to check back with him in the future to see what he was up to with the car and he said yes.
One year goes by and Dad decides to call the guy to check in on the progress of the car. The owner was rather short and seemed annoyed with my father's call. Not a good sign.
In early September 2005, I got the fever again just looking at the pictures we had of the car. I decided to make copies of all the pictures we had and send them to him. At least if he wasn't going to sell the car to me maybe I could get him motivated to fix it up. I figured he would throw my letter away but I knew he would keep the pictures so we wrote our name and phone number on the back of every photo.
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