Still more cars that don't exist.....and more idiots that think they have something valuable....

My last post really riled some people up. There must be a lot of villages missing thier idiots because their all in internet cafe's e-mailing me about their non-existant cars. Here's a few more where comedian Bill Engvall would say-"Here's your sign." ( That says "I'm stupid" if you don't know Engvall's comedy ) # 1. This clown claimed to have a 1976 Z/28 Camaro. In the pictures, it was painted like a '74 Z/28-with the big graphics on the hood. And it had a 350 with a 4-speed-which you could get on a base-model or Rally Sport that year. However-the Z/28 option was killed in the middle of the 1974 model year. There were no 1975 or 76 Z/28's. After seeing the phenomonal success of the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am-sales doubled or tripled every year from 1973-76-even before "Smokey and the Bandit" was released-the Chevy Brass-realized their colossal mistake-and brought back the Z/28 package in March 1977. This clown had a Rally Sport Camaro, that some previous clown had put Z/28 stripes on. # 2. This guy was a Sports car enthusiast who claimed to have a 1969 Pantera. Here's your sign. The Pantera-if you live in a cave-was a joint DeTomaso / Ford venture that was introduced in 1971. The Pantera was a swoopy, two-seat sports car with a 351 Cleveland mounted mid-engine. It was often called the "Poor man's Lamborghini". They were sold through Lincoln-Mercury dealers for about $10,000 from 1971-75. After 1976-some people imported a few until about 1990. What this clown has is a DeTomaso Mangusta-which is the predecesor of the Pantera. It has a mid-mounted 302 Ford V8, and looks a lot like a Pantera. They were built from 1968-1970. A Mangusta is a cool, rare, car-they were ahead of their time-mid-engine, 4-wheel disc brakes, fully independent suspension-but it is NOT a Pantera. # 3. This clown claimed to have an "Extremely Rare" 302 Chevy powered 1969 Trans-Am. !st off-there were only 697 T/A's built in 1969 and they all had 400 inch Pontiac engines. 2nd-the race cars campaigned by Jerry Titus and Milt Minter had special, one-off 303 inch Pontiac engines, that Herb Adams and other engineers built by de-stroking a 400. These engines were expensive to build, had a lot of one-off exotic parts and were unreliable-they blew up a lot-that's why Titus only won a couple of races from 1969-70 before he was killed at Lime Rock. When Pontiac pulled their support-after DeLorean left-race teams- a lot them privateers-couldn't get parts or replacment engines. The SCCA made an exception and ruled that since the Camaro / Firebird were GM "sister" cars-racers could run the much more prevalant 302 Chevy engines in the Firebird bodies. What this guy did-he told me in his e-mail-he bought an old race car to run at the Monterey Historics. I told him to send the vin to Pontiac Historical services and see if it's a "real" Trans-Am-not a '69 Firebird that someone turned into a race car. If it's one of the 697 T/A's built in 1969-it might be worth restoring. If it's a gussied-up base-model Firebird then I'd leave it a race car. But either way-there was NEVER a 302 Chevy powered Firebird Trans Am built by GM. The 302 was only available in Z/28 Camaros from 1967-69. Here's your sign. Mastermind