Trans Am, Resurrected
My dad and I got into a conversation the other day about our 1979 Trans Am, which lives out its days in a garage in the Detroit area. When I was growing up, this was always the car I wanted to go for rides in. On sunny weekends in the mid 1980s, when traffic was light and cool breezes would whisper through the suburbs, my dad would back the black-and-gold trophy out of the garage and we’d head over to his office building in Farmington Hills. The security guard at the gate would know the “Bandit” special from a mile away and would wave to us. Upstairs, my dad would catch up on engineering work, and I’d play computer games or draw pictures in an unoccupied cubicle—usually it would be just the two of us on the whole office floor. Afterwards we’d cruise around, usually picking up hot dogs from a nearby Chicago-style deli. I took along my tape recorder on a few of those “missions,” as the mere sound of the big-block roar and unique transmission whine, once heard never forgotten, were a source of great fascination and excitement for me.
Anyway, the car came up in conversation because a number of years ago, my dad officially gifted the keys and title to me as a sort of passing of the torch. Unfortunately, since I live pretty far from Detroit and don’t get to return to the area as often as I used to—and usually just for short times, during times of year when the weather is pretty poor—the old ‘Bird has been parked for about the last four years. The last time I got it out was in July of 2001, when I pulled it into the backyard and cleaned it thoroughly before putting it away again.
Before that time, I used to try to start it up and run it for about 20 minutes when I would venture northward in the winter. After a while, as the intervals got longer, there got to be a longer and longer list of things I would need to check up on or do before I could try cranking the engine over, and I usually didn’t feel like writhing around on a cold garage floor because every time I’d come to Michigan I would nearly die of asthma asphyxiation, thanks to molds, winter dampness and other airborne crap in the region that we don’t have here in Florida. So over time, the T/A settled into a period of disuse—which, eventually, will always spell death for any vehicle.
I’ve been feeling pretty bad about this for the last couple of years, and finally decided to mention it to my dad. Recently I’d heard my mom talk about a guy they know at their church who has his own shop and works on classic and muscle cars, mostly Fords, and is apparently pretty handy. I’m glad I brought it up, because my dad decided to talk to the guy—and found out that he was just freeing up his shop the very next day and could take the ‘79 in for a few hours’ of prep work—complete fluid change, maybe a fuel tank flush, some oil down the spark plug holes, manual turning of the engine to get it lubed up, and so forth.
I really have to thank my dad here for helping move that process along and arranging for the car to be towed to the guy’s shop yesterday, where it is currently residing. And when my dad told me the guy’s hourly labor rate, I couldn’t really believe it—$25 bucks an hour. You’d be lucky to pay $65 an hour down here. I guess that’s the benefit of being a one-man business, with low overhead, and working on the mechanically simpler cars of yesteryear.
Anyway, I’m excited to hear what may result from this little “freshening up” of our old favorite car. With any luck, it will be in a position to run and drive afterwards. Next month, Apple and I will be traveling to Michigan for a rare visit that not only falls during one of the more pleasant seasons, but also will last a good 12 days. During that time, it would be great fun to be able to get the ‘79 T/A out, maybe cruise a short ways to a place where I can get some fresh photos, clean it up a little bit and enjoy it overall. I have only two digital photos of the car; the rest were all shot on 35mm film, and most of them I no longer seem able to find my scans of. I think it’s high time to capture the beauty of this second-gen F-body in 4-megapixel glory.
As the Special Edition, gold-on-black Trans Ams of the late seventies become more and more sought after, with people actually buying regular T/As and converting them into S/E replicas, the good memories my dad and I veritably built into this car seem all the more poignant now, and I’d like to make sure that this is a car we can continue to share for many more years to come.
Categorized as Cars