It's happened again. I couldn't keep my mitts off that tempting automotive candy store called Hemmings Motor News, and succumbed to a relapse of Mad Car Disease. Yes, I bought another car, another not-quite-mainstream product of the musclecar era. But I don't need any Jungian psychiatrist to tell me why. The impetus for this purchase comes from a latent teenage memory that's lingered in my psyche for 22 years. This time it's a duplicate of my very first car, a '69 Pontiac Grand Prix, a car I bought five days before my 16th birthday, and stupidly sold less than a year later.
This was the "sensible" alternative to the GTO that I really wanted but my parents didn't approve of; although in reality the GP was a 370-horsepower street racer in luxo trim. Even among the SS 396 Chevelles and Mustang Mach I's that peppered my high school's parking lot in 1974, the Grand Prix was a solid performance car and got me accepted with the rowdy, racing, in-crowd.
My previous round of common-sense apoplexy occurred from out of the blue, when I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for a '64 Eldorado, a particular Firemist Gold convertible that struck a resonant chord with my inner child. It was a duplicate of the first car I got a really fast ride in, at the wholly impressionable age of seven. Since that time, however, I've been watching the forces of restoration hell wreak havoc on my checking account, as the Caddy has bounced from paint shop to chrome shop to upholstery shop to engine rebuild shop and, most recently, to wood trim restoration shop. I never claimed Mad Car Disease was a cheap illness to contract.
Ironically, this time I wasn't looking for a '69 Grand Prix at all. I was merely window shopping old Vettes and '63 T-Bird Sports Roadsters. The disease was in its early stages, but the fever was soon to hit. And each new issue of Hemmings whetted my appetite even more for another musclecar. Then I saw it: a '69 Grand Prix, with the 428-cube/390-horse "H.O." engine, four-speed, Posi, air, leather, and virtually every option available that year including an eight-track player (where did I leave those B.J. Thomas tapes?). Like my first car, it's painted a tasteful champagne metallic with a black vinyl top. I wanted it so badly I could barely dial the phone number with my shaking hands.
The problem: The car's in Canada, it's winter, and the temperature there is well below zero. But the owner, Tim Kalil, couldn't have been nicer, more honest, or more willing to help if he'd been a favorite relative. It was the type of buying experience one only hears about in automotive fairy tales, and as this is being written the car is inside an 18-wheeler en route to Los Angeles. The day it arrives I'm going to drive it to my old high school and burn rubber the length of the parking lot, just like I last did in my GP on Oct. 4, 1975.
However, I still haven't been inoculated against MCD. So if you know of a perfect-condition, low-mileage, high-option, all-black '68 Eldorado, please drop me a line.
President Lee Kelley
Publisher Doug Hamlin
Editorial Staff
Editor C. Van Tune
Executive Editor/International Bob Nagy
Senior Feature Editor Rik Paul
Senior Road Test Editor Mac Demere
Detroit Editor Jack Keebler
Feature Editor Jeff Bartlett
Road Test Coordinator Brad Long
Associate Editor Chris Walton
Art Staff
Art Director Tony Fox
Assistant Art Director Andrew Heidrich
Production Staff
Managing Editor Jacqueline Manfredi
Assistant Managing Editor Brandy A. Schaffels
...
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