My wife, Jodi, and I have wanted our own collector car for years. Financially, it just never seemed to be the right time so we lived vicariously through my father, going to shows and car cruises in one of his classic or antique cars that he had restored.

Then one day, in the middle of a substantial home remodeling project, our contractor told us about this 1988 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am GTA.

He said it’s been in his buddy’s garage for years and he believed he would sell the car. We thought..."Wow! A true barn find!" Not really being in the position to purchase, we made arrangements to go see the car anyways.

It was gorgeous and with only 12k miles on the odometer, it was something we knew we just couldn’t pass up! The car was stored for 17 years, in a clean climate controlled garage (not really a barn find). It was sitting sideways in the back of the garage on wheel dollies. The owner just simply stopped driving it one day and began driving a different vehicle in their collection and so there it sat.

The stickers on the windshield indicated that the last time the car went through a Pennsylvania state inspection was 2003! A price was negotiated and arrangements were made to have a flat bed pick it up. We bought it without even knowing if it would run!

Thanks to our good friend, who is also a mechanic, all the proper maintenance and repairs were preformed to get her running again! We flushed the fuel and brake systems, replaced the fuel pump and injectors and all four tires were replaced. The air conditioning compressor was bad so we replaced it and upgraded the refrigerant. Finally we rebuilt the power antenna motor and then we fired her up. After 17 years she roared back to life!

The history of the car is kind of interesting. As I understand it, the car was purchased new in the Philadelphia area. At some point the car was stolen. It was eventually recovered although, I do not know in what time frame that this occurred. The GTA had sadly been partially disassembled. The radio and taillights were missing, there was a scratch down the passenger side, the windshield was missing and the VIN tag had been removed.

The second owner had purchased the car at an insurance auction.

Oddly enough, because the major components of the car were still intact, the car retains a clean title with a reissued VIN. The taillights and radio were replaced, as were the windshield and the paint was repaired.

Today she sits in our garage. It goes out on nice days to car cruises or for drives in the country, sometimes just to go get ice cream and occasionally to work. Since we’ve owned it, it’s never even seen the rain.

Now, she’s not perfect. There are small details and imperfections that we will enjoy detailing as time goes by but, she is better than anything we ever dreamed that we would own!

Recent events in our lives have proved to us that there is never a right time and that life is too short. The timing, financially, was definitely not right for us to purchase this car but, it is a dream come true and a continuation of a family tradition...in fact...our Trans Am bares the Pennsylvania Antique license plate that was originally registered to my father’s first antique car...a 1930 Chevy.