I guess I should start with a little background before delving into the project. I suppose I am a bit of a late bloomer when comes to the car hobby. Most guys boast about how they grew up with cars or they always had some infatuation with them. That wasn't really the case for me. It wasn't until my later high school years when I started to garner an appreciation for things with four wheels and an engine. Growing up, my parents never had any cool vehicles. The driveway was always filled with one Dodge Caravan, and next to it was a Neon for a few years before getting exchanged for a Stratus. At one point, my dad wanted to get an Impala SS when they were brought back in 1994, but somehow decided that a full-size sedan wasn't practical enough for a family of five, and subsequently came home with a shiny new Caravan. These were dark times.
As a result, I was later to the party than most. Sure, my dad would randomly show up in his grandfather's old 63 Plymouth Fury sedan with a beat exterior and a musty interior, but I have no idea where he would go to conjure it up because it did not reside at the house, and before I even got to the age of even knowing what it was, the car was put to pasture. Quite literally, as it was left to rot in a field for twenty-odd years until I was randomly asked if I wanted it one day. My response was, "No." But, in high school, that question was far away. Instead, I was more concerned with learning to drive stick. So, after graduation, and a wreck on my way to a friend's graduation party, I bought a used 2002 Stratus coupe with a 5 speed. Could I drive stick at the time? Nope, but no one I knew had a stick and was willing to teach me, so I settled for the option of "learn it or bust."
The R/T coupe was cool. It was a coupe. It was a stick. It was red. It also handled like dogshit, ate front rotors, and had wheels that would bend if you said "uneven surface" too loudly. So, after a year or so, I started looking at replacing it with something that was a little sportier, but I wasn't quite sure what to go with. I looked at the all-new 2005 Mustang GT, and that didn't do it for me. I looked at the Chrysler Crossfire, and that didn't do the trick, either. I went to the Subaru dealer to look at the WRX and was told to come back with "mommy or daddy" and they would let me drive one around the parking lot. I told that guy to go fuck himself. And, finally, I came across the Pontiac GTO. Being a late teen and getting behind the driver's seat was no easy task, but once I took one out, I was hooked. I had to have one. The problem was that I was a college student with a student's income. Well, a slightly above-average income, which allowed me to spring for Yuengling instead of Milwaukee's Best. But still, there was no way for me to afford one of these brand new. The stroke of luck came in that sales were abysmal, so the discounts were steep. As a result, these things depreciated like a BMW in the used market, knocking one year-old cars with mileage in the teens down from the mid-30s to the low-20s. So, in 2006, I had enough money saved for a down payment and was able to purchase a used 2005 GTO with 16,000 miles on the clock.
This car was my leap into being a gearhead. It was the first vehicle I had extensively modified, it was my introduction to the car community, and it was the basis for some friendships that have continued to this day. For a few years, I attended and hosted numerous GTO gatherings. I would travel places to assist with modifying other people's GTOs. Much like how I learned to drive stick, I learned how to wrench by turning bolts on my own car. If I wasn't driving it, I online reading, and if I wasn't online, I was at a gathering. And during all of that, the car slowly became uniquely mine.
The meets were a blast, with some shenanigans even making waves across the internet. If anyone remembers streetfire.net and the video of the black C6 spinning out on the highway that lived on the site's front page for weeks, that was at a GTO meet. And as I said, some lasting friendships resulted from these gatherings. Most notably, this GTO was how I met Geoff (3rdGenFan), as he also took advantage of the undesirability of the GTO and picked one up at a young age. Here's him and I claiming the highways for ourselves:
I even managed to sneak this bad bitch onto the boardwalk car show at Wildwood. I probably shouldn't have been able to do so considering that I simply just drove onto the boardwalk and idled along the crowd until I found an open spot. No one stopped me either day, so I would simply park and continue to nurse my hangover. Wildwood held their Irish weekend at the same time they held their car cruise. So, it was cars in the day and drinking in the evening.
But one fateful night in October of 2011, the car gods looked upon me and said:
dat 
looks clean with 
since they flew off the lots in record time. The used prices are in the stratosphere now, so I'll probably never own one. It's just as well since it would have to be my daily, which would require driving it during the salty winter months. Plus, averaging 27-28 a tank in the GTI is rather 
. The 6/72 warranty is pretty 
, too.
stigma you guys speak of.
and at $15K it wasn't much of a stretch to just go for a Corvette. 
. Funny, he must've buried that deep down, never even mentioned it. 
piece of 
that car was.