Not really so long ago, in this very galaxy…
I was 15 when I got to drive my dream car. My uncle drove his 1969 Camaro Rally Sport out for a visit. The first generation Camaro, ’69 especially, was always at the top of my list of favorite cars. After getting to drive it around my grandparent’s neighborhood, I was in love.
My uncle called me a few years later, saying he was getting rid of it and if I thought I could get her from his home in Colorado to mine in Arizona, I could have it. I immediately informed my dad that we were taking a road trip and within a week or two, we embarked on a fairly epic road trip that took us to the beach in San Diego, through L.A., into Death Valley, down the strip at night in Las Vegas, and then out to my uncle’s.
The car hadn’t been driven in a while, but still ran. The body had a few dents and scrapes, rust from the salted winter roads, and dimples on every horizontal surface from a massive hail storm. It took us a day to get her ready for the trip home and we left that evening. Other than bits of the vinyl roof flying off on the interstate, the trip home was relatively uneventful.
I fixed her up and she was my daily driver for a year or so until the I had the heads rebuilt to get rid of the blast of smoke whenever she’d start up. That ended up blowing the bottom end of the engine out, so I started my first attempt at restoring her. I had the engine rebuilt while I replaced all of the suspension and redid the wiring. Not long after, the crankshaft in the newly built engine split in two and after replacing that with the engine out of my dad’s truck, the steering box went out. I parked her again to save money for more repairs. This is also when I decided that Pandora would be her name.
Life happened and she ended up mostly sitting for a few years. I seemed to always lack some combination of the required time, space and money to work on her. More life happened and I ended up moving 300 miles north into an apartment, during which time I had none of the three requirements. Things got better and I got a house with a garage, along with a very supportive wife (she didn’t come with the house – she came separately). In November 2018, The Orion used his dad’s truck and trailer to haul the car up to our place.
Six months later, she is still under a car cover in front of the Gilded Verdant Double Wide. I’m still getting some prep work done before I can start on things in earnest, but if all goes well, she’ll move under her own power again this summer!