I was out rollerblading with a friend one night in his neighborhood and we passed a house with a '79 TA for sale. I had looked at the price and they only wanted $1500 for it! The owner came out and I talked to him about the car some.

It was his wife's car that he and his brother had just completely rebuilt the engine and he said it had roughly 15K miles on it after the rebuild. I don't know what the rebuild included, but it certainly was not stock. I took it for a test drive with his wife and loved the speed and power it had. She lectured me on the muscle power and all, but was put at ease when I told her I already owned a similar car.

I bought the car a week later and drove it home in the rain, which was a pretty bad beginning, considering I had just purchased 400 cubic inches of engine and had no traction. The tires were rock hard Cooper Cobras and it slid few times when stopping in the rain on the way home.

This bad boy was a lot of fun to drive. It was loud, it roared with raw power, and it scared anyone out of my way. It would cruise along nicely at about 80mph with no shaking or vibrating.  When someone tried to take me on, I would floor it and the competition got a huge white plume of smoke in their view. I am not sure of the exact speed I've gotten this car to, but I had a friend pace me at about 120mph. The speedometer only goes to 100mph on these cars and the needle was wrapped almost around to the 0 again. I never got to run it at the track.

Everything on it was original. I believe this must have been a special or rare model as the interior didn't match the stock color codes for this year. The entire interior of the car was sky blue: the dash, the seats, the carpet, and even the headliner.

I had only driven it 6 months before I pulled the engine and transmission out to put in my '76.