This is gonna be a long post. Fair warning. Yes, it's about my car.
This meme pretty much sums up how I feel about my car. Keri doesn't get it. I don't expect her to anymore - but my Trans Am means a lot to me for a lot of reasons.
This whole thing goes a long way back into my childhood. I've always loved cars and motorcycles - period. When I came to the US at age 10, and saw and heard the Iroc Camaros and Z28's on the roads, I was hooked. We had a game on the school bus where we would spot cool cars and claim them. Most of them were Camaros and Trans Ams. I loved Knight Rider on TV and I fell in love with american muscle v8 cars.
Fast forward to high school and my best friend owned a 1969 Pontiac LeMans - basically a lower model of the GTO. We raised hell in that car (too many stories to tell) and I always wanted me own. Around 1995 when I graduated from high school, one of my sisters friends was enlisted and he had just bought a white 1995 Z28 Camaro. He took me for a ride and put that thing sideways pulling out on to the main drag outside the air force base and I was completely obsessed from that moment forward. I had to get one of these things one day. And that was "just" an LT1 back in those days which would be underpowered by todays standards.
When we moved to Spokane in 1995 was when I started seeing the LT1 Firebird Trans Am's on the streets and it was like no other car I'd ever seen. I wanted one sooo bad. I was determined to own one by my 25th birthday which would have been 2000. It snows in Spokane, and I was broke as joke back then, so I couldn't afford a truck or another vehicle to drive in the winter, and Firebirds are awful in the snow so practicality won out. I bought a brand new Z24 Cavalier in 1997 but it just didn't measure up. I wanted my TA! I kept my Cavalier for about a year and a half and just had to have a Firebird. I didn't care about the damn snow anymore! So I made what was probably a terrible decision and got rid of what was almost a brand new car with low mileage and bought a 1996 Trans Am with 62k on it. It had problems from the get go but it was a Trans Am! I'd accomplished my goal.
Lots of things transpired pretty quickly over that period of time, and I did a short stint in Seattle for a job and the practicality of things got to me again and I traded it in on an Acura 2.2 CL. BORING! Of course, I quickly grew tired of it and still wanted a muscle car.
During that period of time the 1998+ series of LS1 Trans Ams had hit the market and my obsession was even worse. The styling just absolutely had me and it was instantly my "attainable dream car." I had to have one.
Long story short, I came across an ad in the local paper one day for a 1998 Firebird Trans Am WS6 for $16,995. That was doable! I got down there as fast as I could. It was at the George Gee dealership in the Spokane Valley. When I got to the lot, I couldn't find it. I looked all through the used car lot and no WS6. I was bummed. It must have already been gone. I'd called ahead and they said they still had it so I would doubly pissed off. Then I happened to drive around to the back of the dealership. There was a dirt lot in the back and there sat the TA. It almost looked like an abandoned car. It was covered in dirt and looked pretty terrible, but I knew what I had. I think it only had 26k miles on it, maybe it was 40k, I can't remember, but I knew what it could be. Every item both inside and out that could be easily removed and but back on was painted bright neon green. The vents on the outside, the Trans Am lettering on the sides, the speaker grills, the dash surround, the stereo surround - all neon green. It was appalling on the inside. I looked past all of it. I knew what it was. I think they story they told me was that a young kid of some wealthy parents owned it and one of his friends had joy ridden it to Portland or something. They finally got it back and the parents forced him to trade it in on something else. I negotiated a fair trade and some fixes for the car (fix the non working AC and detail it) and it was mine. They never did detail it. They washed it and said "good enough." I didn't care. I had an LS1 WS6!
I drove it as my primary, daily driver for about three years. I think I bought it in 2001-ish. I got a job in Seattle in 2003 and I was driving it back and forth to Spokane and racked up a lot of miles. I got a crappy truck back then too and the TA was mostly "retired". After that, life kind of got in the way. We bought our first house in 2005 and the TA developed a couple of small problems and it mostly sat in the driveway. It developed a rain leak and the floor plans filled up with water, and after that it was hardly driven. Then a little oil pressure issue got me spooked and I totally stopped driving it. The kids, the house and the family are always my #1 priority. I would NEVER get rid of the TA, so my in-laws are kind enough to let me build a 20x20 shop on their property so the TA would have a home. There she has sat for a couple of years. The years just keep adding up.
I had grand intentions of fixing it myself, but other priorities always come first. I bought a bunch of performance parts and amassed most of the things I needed to get her back together better than ever. I have finally admitted that I can't do it on my own. I could, but it would be really hard. I found an awesome LS specialist in the Yakima area, Valencia Motorsports, owned by Jose Valencia. Jose drove all the way to Sequim and picked up the car a few weeks ago. She's under the knife so to speak at his shop. I am beyond excited for it to be fixed and driveable. There will still be a lot for me to do to make her road worthy. The brakes and tires are shot. The suspension and all the bushing are shot. It needs a lot of wear items and fluids replaced, but they are all things I can do on my own and on my own time. I have had a vision for the car for almost two decades that I must fulfill. Then I will enjoy it and hopefully one day pass it down to my kids. That's the plan. I have been through a lot with that car and it was/is an achievement for me. It continues to be. It was a struggle for me to even own it. It has been a struggle to keep it. And now it is a struggle to getting to where I've always wanted it to be w/o having the time or money to do it. Now is the time. I'm getting old so I need to enjoy it. If anything is my mid life crisis - this is it!
