Remember the story about the bird....if you set it free and it comes back to you? Well, here's a bird (a Firebird, LOL) that came back.

In November 2005 after most of the artwork was completed on this car (originally the artwork was put on a black background rather than the gold you see on page 1) one of Mark's body repair guys was running a quick errand and got rear ended not 50 feet away from the shop. Afterwards, Mark just parked the car on the lot and figured he'd get back to working on it someday, but he was so disappointed that all the work he had put into it was gone that quickly he never quite recovered.

There was an older guy who kept coming into the shop and asking Mark to sell him his car -- he wanted the TransAm as a project car for he and his son to work on and knew that his son would love the car. After about six months, Mark gave in and sold him the car for $800 and a '95 Lincoln TownCar.

Several months later Mark and I were at the local 7-11 parking lot driving his other '92 Trans Am Convertible (really, he had two! LOL) and some of the local yocals yelled out, 'you need parts for that car? We have a friend who has one just like it in his yard he's trying to get rid of. He'll probably give it to you to get it out of his yard.' After a little discussion and description of the car, we just knew it had to be Mark's Sept. 11th Trans Am.

Me -- I'm an f-body enthusiast. I absolutely love the third gens and when I found out Mark had gotten rid of his I was really upset...I couldn't believe he let it go so easily. I definitely would have talked him out of it if I had known he was even thinking of getting rid of it. And, after driving Mark's other TransAm while he was overhauling my Z28 (four months) and knowing how much I enjoyed driving it, he tried for the very first time that same day to GIVE me his red T/A convertible. But, I just couldn't take it -- I knew he loved his car and he knew how rare the car is, so I kept telling him no. Now, he had a second opportunity to give me "his" car -- just not the red car, but the black one...

We left the parking lot with Mark asking me, do you want it? Tell me now and we'll go take a look at it and I'll fix it for you. It was like some kind of grand karma! With an offer like that, how could I say no. So, we head back around the block to the 7-11 and who arrived in the parking lot -- the guy who had the car in his yard. (Timing is EVERYTHING!) We talked to the guy for a few minutes and he told us to just follow him home. We did.

The car looked just like it did when Mark sold it -- we were so scared to open the hood. We just figured that if these people wanted to get rid of it that bad and it was only $150 that everything would be gone from under the hood. Cringing, we opened the hood and everything was just as he had left it...nothing under the hood was touched. The only thing that had been done to the car is (from what we've heard) that the kid wanted to take out the power steering, so he removed the steering wheel from the car and then couldn't get it back on properly. The kid contacted the local Chevy dealer who gave him a price of $2,200 to replace the steering column and the kid lost interest.

We negotiated to tow the car and pay $100 and we'd have it gone that night. A deal was struck and now the car is mine.

Hope you enjoyed the story behind the car -- I always thought this kind of thing just never happens to me, but it did. So, keep your dreams active and someday they just might come true.