the Wall Street Journal had a catchy headline that caught my eye.... a Private Eye found the Trans Am he'd sold decades ago, in Alabama, and now he's restored it.

The black beauty that was the joy of his adolescence had been through 4 other owners, and in the weather for 15 years, during which time the T-top had been leaking, the floorboards rotting, the dashboard disintegrating and the firewall crumbling. The engine was blown.

Gransden grew up near Buffalo, New York, and saved up to buy his 1979 model when he turned 17. He was already a talented trumpeter. After a few semesters at Fredonia State University, he toured with the Tommy Dorsey big band for a year (that band is still performing, though Dorsey died in 1956), lived in Manhattan, then relocated to Atlanta and entered Georgia State University to study music.

To cover tuition he sold his beloved special edition Firebird. The beast was a beautiful car, but the 400 cubic inch V-8 engine drank a lot of gasoline.

“I really needed a Honda,” said Gransden. “In Atlanta a nine-mile-per-gallon four speed Trans Am was not the way to go.” On the other hand, “I really didn’t want to sell that car.”

Robert Baitis, a transplant from Germany, bought it in 1993 for $7,500 then moved to an apartment in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Trans Am had to sit out in a parking lot most of the day.

Baitis felt bad about that, so he sold it to his mechanic in Alabama for $9,500, before moving back to Atlanta. The mechanic passed on, leaving the car to his widow, who remarried and sold the car again, to someone in a small town south of Huntsville.

After some bargaining with the brother, Gransden bought back his old car for $6,000. He sent it on a flatbed to Trans Am Specialties of Florida in Miami, where Deiters keeps perhaps 80 Trans Ams that he’s restoring, selling or buying.

Next came the pandemic. Gransden, who makes his money from performing, couldn’t perform. Deiters, who gets his parts through the supply chain, couldn’t get parts. Everything stopped.

Then Deiters’ warehouse caught fire. Thirteen priceless Trans Ams burned to the axles. His shop and showroom were half-destroyed. The business ground to a halt as Deiters rebuilt the structure. But Gransden’s Trans Am was spared. Said Deiters, “It not only survived sitting under that tree in Alabama, it survived the fire in my place.”

After four years in the shop, and many thousands in restoration costs, including a transplanted low-mileage 2006 GTO engine, Gransden’s Firebird came home.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/a-private-detective-found-his-trans-am-it-was-under-a-tree-in-alabama-9bf4b557

https://www.ajc.com/news/he-sold-his-trans-am-30-years-ago-and-spent-20-years-trying-to-get-it-back/7QCUF4FX2RB23JNNR6MDAWORSM/

https://www.uniondemocrat.com/lifestyle/article_d1ebc20e-4095-11ef-a334-77c52cb39289.html