> I’VE WANTED ONE OF THESE SINCE I WAS 8
The car: 1980 Pontiac Trans Am
The owner: Chris Douros. The story: I’ll start with what’s timely: my car was rented to the movie set of Pixels starring Adam Sandler. The film is coming out at the end of July and my Trans Am should — fingers crossed — appear as a background car. I had contacted picturecarsnorth.ca and sent them some photos. They had the car carefully towed to the set and brought it back 24 hours later.
The back story is that I’d been looking for a second-generation Trans Am for years. I was in talks with a guy in Leamington, Ont. I checked out a ’79 in Scarborough. I found this one in Sudbury, Ont.
The owner was a collector, who was replacing it with a black-andgold, limited-edition 1978. My wife, dog and I left Toronto on a December morning. We hit a snowstorm but my wife said, “keep going.”
The colour was perfect and the overall condition seemed decent. Not a show car but a great driver. I inspected the car for an hour. I like to drive my cars before buying, but there was too much snow outside. We made a deal.
I gave the seller a deposit to hold the car until spring. As the days passed, I decided I didn’t want to wait. So in the middle of January, I drove back up to Sudbury with my brother and Gemma. The plan was to get CAA to tow the car back as far as possible, then use my brother’s CAA tow to get it to our a condo garage for storage, where we could also work on it as our winter project.
The previous owner had restored the car with new paint, stickers, a GM crate motor (350 cubic inch/5.7 litres) and flow master exhaust and headers. When I bought the car a year and a half ago, I put a new heater core to fix a leaking one, new radiator, starter, new carpet, floor mats, put the bird emblem on the dash and recently did some suspension work to improve the handling.
My car won “One of the Best of 2014” at the Back Alley Cruisers Monday night car show, which is held Mondays at the AMC Theatre parking lot in Vaughan.
So I have my dream Trans Am. I’m 35 and I’ve wanted one of these cars since I was 8 years old. Show us your candy: Do you have a beautiful original, restored or customized car? Send us your words, and pictures, which are especially welcome if you or yours are in them. Email wheels@thestar.ca and be sure to use “Eye Candy” in the subject line.