I got hooked in 1985 when I was 15. I guy I went to school with had an older brother who owned a 1969 Carousel red 4 spd Judge. The car was in the family since the late 1970's. His family owned a junkyard in Wallington NJ so anytime something broke (which was often as it was ridden hard all the time) it was fixed right away with parts from the yard they owned. As cool as the car was I thought it was odd that it didn't have any creature comforts like power windows, air etc. I know, strange but I never liked the bare basics of the car but still wanted one like it.
It was a year later when I really caught a bad case of the GTO fever. A new kid moved into town in 1986 who is my best friend to this day. A muscle car guy like me he tells me that in the town he lived in before which was close by, there was a guy down the road from him with a Carousel Red 69 GTO Convertible that he remembered seeing for years growing up. I thought right away it must be a Judge, afterall, orange GTO's were Judges when you didn't know much. He was a year older than me and had his license already so one night we drive over there. I took a flash light and looked in the garage window and there I saw a sea of orange paint and a white top, it existed! No spoiler or decals were seen which I found odd. Turns out I was only about a year away from getting my license so now and then my friend and I would drive by the house to see it if was outside ever. One day there the car was outside with the owner! He turns out to be quite snippy and wanted NOTHING to do with a young guy even looking at his car and NO, it was not for sale. He thought of young people as careless punks who would just wreck the car and not appreciate it. He told me how people would follow the tow truck home when the car would break down and he would never sell it. I did get a decent look at it and it was tired, some rust and dents but it was really loaded and all there. It had power windows, seat, buckets, tilt, hiddens, rallys, no air oddly, special paint and white interior. None-the-less being kind of rude he tells me the whole story about the car. It wasn't a Judge but a special order color (even rarer than a Judge) Carousel Red 69 convertible he bought at Vale Pontiac in Montvale, NJ(went under in the late 1990's). It was ordered by a man who never picked it up so it was sitting on the lot for a while. He went there to buy a Firebird convertible but it was too small for his family and ended up buying the GTO. He had taken the car off the road pretty much by 1986 and had started to do some minor resto too. It was not for sale so I forgot about it but would still drive by now and then. I had discovered GS Buicks after being unable to get his car and found a GS455 convertible in 1987 when I turned 17 which was fun and real fast but falling apart. I ended up finding a 69 GTO one day for $3500 and had fun with that too but the parents said I had to sell one of the cars and the GTO was sold less than 10 weeks later. It also was falling apart.
Time went on and around 1993 I had just graduated college, was working and had money too. I had sold the Buick and decided to persue that guys GTO again. I had to use some stealthy tatics. I sent my mom over there to ask him if he would sell it with her being older than me! I felt a bit guilty but it was the only way this would work since he really loather young people. Turns out he had lost interest on the car and it was for sale! e was a gentleman to to her and she knew cars as well so they chatted for a while. He got hooked on Mustangs and began restoring one. He said he wanted $8500 for the GTO but when my mom came home she said it was in real sad shape. I was real surprised when she told me this but it turns out that he had left it outside for almost five years under some oak trees uncovered while he was restoring a Mustang! Now the story gets really funny. I had to see the car up close so he offered to have her mechanic look at the car at a local gas station he knew of. Well, I borrowed a tech uniform from the car dealer where I worked and posed as her mechanic. My stomach turned when we had the car up on the lift. It had become a total rusty mess. Everything was damp, covered in mildew and he even sprayed fresh undercoating all over the undercarriage to hide all rust. There was no way this car was worth $8500 and he wouldn't budge on the price. I only had about $6000. I was heartbroken and never bought the car. The original owner car with every scrap of paperwork since day one had eluded me for seven years and I came so close to getting it. I couldn't believe and still to this day how a guy who defended this car so much and would never sell to anyone would just let it rot away outside.
I ended up finding a nice 69 convertble a year later which I still own and I actually found his phone number a few years back. He did end up selling it to a guy in Mahwah NJ, that's all he told me. He has since passed away and to this day I think whatever happend to that car. I threw away the vin after the deal fell through and have asked around my club but no one knows about the car or ever saw it. Perhaps someone knows out here.....
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