Original Paperwork and Photos

My dad is what you might call 'meticulous' when it comes to paperwork. In fact, I think he still has every tax return he's ever filed. So it was no surprise to find out that he still had the original bill of sale and window sticker for the car.



Along with finding the paperwork, I also found some photos from when he brought his new baby home. You know it's new since it still has the paper plates and floor room shine!

Where She Came From

I guess I should start with a little history on my car. It's not everyday you run across one of these puppies. You could say I got lucky having this gem fall into my lap since she originally belonged to my dad. Yup, he's the original owner, bought her brand new at the end of '67 for the '68 model year when he was 22. He drove her quite a bit and racked up around 200K miles on her before she settled into the garage for a 20+ year hibernation. As the story goes, my dad was challenged to a race by his friend who had a Volkswagen and by the end of that drag my dad's car was acting like she was running on 6 cylinders. So he parked her and left her for me to eventually discover.

Growing up, she was always just the car that sat in the garage and served as more of a storage shed than a motor vehicle. I remember sitting on the trunk and watching my dad do various things in the garage. My brother was fond of climbing on the roof. I didn't really take an interest in her till my senior year of high school. By this time I had decided to go to college and major in Mechanical Engineering and I just started to wonder about that old car in the garage. I broached the subject with my dad and we decided to try and get her running again. This was in 2000. I can't remember how we got her to the local auto shop, but we did. Turns out that race my dad had run so long ago had slipped the timing chain. Once we got that fixed my dad and I replaced the water pump and thermostat, re-built the radiator, and got her some new brakes and tires. Somewhere along the way we got a new brake master cylinder because the old one just quit one day when my dad was driving her. That could have been very unfortunate. Sadly she ended up back in the garage where she had sat for 20+ years only to sit for another 9 more. That's when I got my own garage and my dad gifted me the title to the car.

My name is Christine, I'm 27. Vertigo is my 1968 Pontiac Firebird 400, she's 42. This is our story ...