Amazing detective work Jose. Thank you for sharing the story with us. My favorite part of the story is the original owner calling you while at a bar HAHA

Yep, hell of a story, and detective work. I need to hire you guys to track down the history of my '67. Not because it's anything special, but I would like to know who the knucklehead/s were that kept crashing this poor car...:rolleyes2:
It truly would be a great addition to the story if you could acquire the original engine. Maybe have to buy the whole car and put another engine in it to sell again, but that may be what it comes to.

It was a LOT of work and many dead ends I thought were promising leads. Not sure I want to go through it again. After contacting the names on the title, Bentley was able to contact Rooker who was able to give the name Allen Mason spelled "ALLEN".Those contact numbers were found using Google and choosing names to call based on age and location. I believe Bentley was able to speak to Rooker after calling his son.

I had to use a classmates.com account to "look" for Allen Mason around Junction City OH where Rooker said he bought the car.

Turns out, his real name was Alan Mason and I only found him because classmates.com provides a list of names as a close match when searching the area. He went to Logan High School.

Next I had to use a whitepages account to call the numbers associated with that name, and it was just by chance his ex wife picked up the phone and was able to talk to Alan on my behalf. The one name he mentioned was a Richard Buckley who I attempted to make contact multiple times. Months later I gave it another shot this time calling his nephew Charles and he picked up and put me in touch with Charley and Richard (4th owner) who were essentially neighbors to Alan.

Richard and Charley were able to contact me at that point. Understandably, Richard says he thought I was spam the entire time, even though I left a clear message about his Black 67. Once I was able to contact Charley and Richard, they gave me the name John Goss whom I still haven't spoke to directly. They advised me to call his younger brother Shane Goss, who I found and messaged on Facebook and he called me immediately. Shane happens to be the brother of John the 2nd owner and good friends with Bruce the original owner.

With that being said, there were plenty of dead ends, wrong people called etc. I even found an original owner to another L78 but turns out it was Blue and the car was still around sold to the guys neighbor. I also thought the Black L78 car was repossessed at one point after finding this clipping in the local newspaper. Turns out it wasn't the car but the funny thing is, one of the owners laughed and said they know whose car it was. Those are some of the leads that can throw you off for weeks. I got lucky. Keep in mind that finding the current owner of another car I thought had my original block and getting the complete vin off the pad was a journey all in itself.

Some of the tools used were:
Google.com
Classmates.com
Whitepages.com
Newspapers.com (Didn't help in this case)
Facebook.com


I hope this helps!

Awesome!

Amazing sleuthing, thanks for sharing.

A six week old Camaro getting repossessed? I bet it lived a hard life for the last few weeks

67- l78
 

Wow, now that was a fun story to read. That got interesting. That will be great car to restore.:biggthumpup:

Richard and Dorothy provided the following photos and have given me consent to post. Dorothy was a senior in High School at the time and these photos were taken around 1980 about a year before they were married. They went on their first date in the Camaro and went everywhere together in the car. They are still married to this day. The Dart in the photos is the car he traded to Alan for the Camaro.

Speaking with Richard today on the phone he remembered adjusting the brakes on the car with Alan and only touching the rear brakes not the front, so he says the front brakes were most likely disc (Although Alan remembers the car having drums).

Richard said he installed the rear spoiler and the CB radio in the car. He also said the Camaro had an 8-Track player.

When he sold the Camaro he told the guys (Rooker) it had a bad steering box, which could explain why the car has the 69 Z box on it now. He thinks it was a power steering box.


Enjoy the photos!

So cool you are finding this info and the pics!

Very cool Jose'. Just how I remember those street-fighter cars looking back then.