A PRIVATE DETECTIVE FOUND HIS TRANS AM. IT WAS UNDER A TREE IN ALABAMA.

Joe Gransden, 53, a professional trumpet player and singer living in Atlanta, on his 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, as told to A.J. Baime.

In the small town where I grew up—Williamsville, N.Y.—everybody loved cars. I saw “Smokey and the Bandit” when I was in high school, and couldn’t get enough of the black Firebird Trans Am that was in it. I saw the same model car in “Rocky II.”

I saved money for two summers, and, in about 1988, I found a Trans Am similar to the one in “Smokey and the Bandit” for sale in Rochester, N.Y. I went to see it with my girlfriend’s brother, who was a car guy. He said the car was solid, so I bought it for (I think) $5,000—a lot of money for me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was buying a special-edition Y84 Trans Am, with a Pontiac 400-cubic inch V-8 engine and a stick shift. Without even knowing, I had bought what is now considered a collector car.

Throughout high school, the Trans Am was my identity. After a couple of years of university outside of Buffalo, N.Y., I went on tour with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra for about a year. When I quit that band, my parents were moving to Atlanta, so I moved there to finish college. I drove the Trans Am from Buffalo to Atlanta. When I arrived, I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to pay for college and gas. I had to let this car go. Selling it was a brutal decision.

Through the years, I dreamed of finding the car again. But I had no information, no paperwork, no vehicle identification number. One day, around 2017, I stumbled on a TV show called “Trans Am” and saw a car like the one I had owned. My 8-year-old son was with me. I said, “I used to own a Trans Am like that one.” He said, “Dad, you have to go find that car!”

That hit me. I went into full search mode.

I called a guy named Rick Deiters of Trans Am Specialties of Florida, a top restoration and sales shop. He put a photo of me and the car from when I was in high school on his social media. Amazingly, the guy I’d sold the car to in 1993 saw that photo. He called me and said, “I remember your driveway. Your father was there. You were so upset about selling this car!” He no longer owned the car, but was able to find an old insurance card that had the vehicle identification number. We figured out that the last time the car had been registered was in 2002, in Alabama. But now the trail went dark, again.

I hired an Atlanta-based private investigator, who sounded on the phone like he could have been a character in “Smokey and the Bandit.” I don’t know how he found the car, but he did. It was still in Alabama, and had been sitting under a tree for about 20 years. I drove up there with a flatbed and cash.

Back in high school, I was waxing the car one day when I left a buffer on the right front fender. It burned a little of the paint. When I saw the car again after decades, I immediately noticed that stain. It was as if it was winking at me. I had tears in my eyes.

The owner and I struck a deal for $6,000, and I had Rick at Trans Am Specialties restore the car. The job started during Covid-19 when everything was shut down. The car came home this past July. The old engine was gone, so now it had an LS2 V-8 engine out of a Corvette. But the rest of the car was mostly as it was when I owned this Trans Am in high school.

My son is now 14, and he can’t believe it. It will be his someday. It will stay in the family—this time, forever.

Write to A.J. Baime at [email protected].

2024-09-08T12:11:59Z dg43tfdfdgfd