i'm the guy who restored the Lemans Sport, other than the final body prep and paint, and thanks for the compliments.  Our COPO car was silver.  Our L78 car was silver.  Our el Camino was silver.  Even though the Lemans was originally silver, I just never liked them in that colour.  Silver needs the black side accent of some sort and the '72 stripe just looked odd to me.  The rear valance under the bumper was plastic and was broken at the ends, so I did the '70 GTO exhaust treatment with the steel valance with the exhaust cutouts.  A guy I worked with had just bought a new '98 Grand Prix and that red just struck me.  We were happy with the way the car turned out.  I assembled the fresh 455 and it turned out to be a winner.  It was CONSIDERABLY quicker than our L78 car.  The car had sat in a garage in Bowmanville from '84 until 1992 when we bought it.  Larry Davidson, the guy who used to do the GM of Canada documentation work, put me onto the car.  I eventually connected with George Tomlinson, the original owner, who sent me the info on the car.  Back then GM employees could order cars the way they wanted.  GM would mile it out as a staff car, sometimes with only a thousand or two miles.  Then you got your car.  George was the staffer who drove the car so it was sort of his from day one.  He obviously knew how to order a nice car.  I was going to have George take it for a drive when the car was finished.  Unfortunately he passed away before that happened.  About the only original thing I didn't get with the car was the AM-FM radio which was long gone.  I've never driven a smoother stick shift car.  Anyone can hop into that car and drive it like they always had.  No bucking like with our L78 at low speeds.  And no, Steve isn't paying me to advertise. ;)

-- Edited by Keith Tedford on Monday 7th of February 2011 09:41:57 PM