FIREBIRD IS SWEET MUSIC TO ROCKFORD FAN
Film location scout could only drive past 1978 Pontiac so many times before buying
For the past 25 years, Dave Small has been a searching out the best locations for movies and TV series to be filmed. It's a dream job that leads him through urban back alleys, country roads and into remote areas of British Columbia.
Among the challenges he has overcome was the need to find the interior of a rustic lodge in the Vancouver area. It had to match exterior shots of a woodsy retreat taken in Squamish for the Al Pacino movie Insomnia, set in an Alaskan town.
“We looked for weeks, and it was getting tense. Then I found the perfect wood interior in a closed Earl's restaurant in a Tsawwassen shopping mall,” he says. “It was all old wood and it matched the rustic lodge perfectly.”
In 2011, he was working on a TV series with most of the locations he had to find in downtown Langley. One day while driving through the area, he spotted a 1978 Pontiac Firebird with a for sale sign on the windshield parked in front of a small house.
“I burst out laughing. I couldn't believe it,” he recalls. “I've been a crazy huge fan of the TV series Rockford Files and always loved Jim Rockford's Pontiac Firebird Esprit. But, at no time, was I actively looking for one.”
Actor James Garner played L.A.-based detective Jim Rockford in the series that ran from 1974 through 1980. He always drove a copper mist Firebird Esprit which was renewed every year up to the 1978 model year.
The continuing location searches caused Small to drive by the Firebird for sale in Langley three weeks in a row. He finally stopped to have a closer look.
“It had faded paint, bad rims, lousy tires, worn-out front seats and damage to the rear fender. But it felt like the car was calling to me,” he says looking back 10 years. “And, just like that, I owned a 1978 Firebird.”
So began the slow “Rockford correct” restoration, which began with new valve seals so the car, could be driven without the engine belching blue smoke. Next came correct Rockford Rallye II mag wheels procured from Classic Central in California. Small then swapped out the
worn front seats for Rockford correct camel tan buckets. New whitewall tires would be a recent addition. The paint job was badly faded and needed to be redone.
“I had hummed and hawed for a good five years. As crazy and extravagant as it seemed, I figured that life ain't no dress rehearsal, so I decided to go ahead with it,” he says.
Small sent the car to a professional shop for the work to be done. It was soon discovered the rear body and frame were badly
rusted and the whole rear of the car would have to be replaced.
“We blew through the money I had set aside and the contingency,” he says. “The whole project became 10 times more than I was ever expecting, but I was so far into it there was no turning back.”
With 80 per cent of the work completed, COVID-19 hit the project like a sledgehammer.
“The whole project seemed to come to a standstill and then the owner of the shop told me the fellow working on the car quit. For a while it all just felt like my car disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.
Small kept phoning the owner and asking if he had any idea on a delivery date. The promise of “next week” came and went about five times. It became: Dude, where's my car? Work subsequently resumed and the car was completed after a year of shop time.
“They did a good job with the car and I was happy, but the process took forever,” he says.
Now that his car sports a new “Rockford correct” sierra gold paint job, Small drives his Firebird on weekends and days off. The car gets a lot of thumbs up. “Last week, a mail carrier shouted out: “Hey — is that Jim Rockford's car? I love that show.'”
Reflecting back on his decadelong journey with the Rockford Firebird, Small has this to say: “At times, I think I'm nuts for going through with it. The car is a money pit. But I love the car and it's a blast to drive. I just never planned to do any of this.”
Small's next move may be perfecting Rockford's famous reverse 180-degree turn called a Moonshiners turn or J turn. Real Rockford fans would expect no less.