LONGINGS & DREAMS

With a little today and a whole lot of yesterday, this throwback Trans Am makes us feel like a kid again.

- STEVEN RUPP

Like most good stories, this one starts out with the dreams and longings of a kid. When we're young, before the realities of life beat the innocence out of us, we see nothing but a world of possibilities. We see a poster of a car, or maybe even Farrah Fawcett, and say "one day." Todd Evans was that kid, and the experiences of his youth did a lot to shape the desires of his adulthood. "I remember the old World of Wheels cars displayed with all the chrome, mirrors, and even fur! I remember the Imperial Stormtrooper Vega on the cover of the program, and I remember Rick Dobbertin's Nova. I like cars that grab your attention even if you don't know the first thing about cars. I like life-size Hot Wheels. I like obnoxious," Evans said.

Fast-forward quite a bit, and Evans now had some cash burning a hole through his jeans and a plan to make his childhood fantasy a reality (the car, not Farrah). He did what we all do these days: hit up the interwebs. As Evans told HOT ROD, "For some reason, I just did a one-word search. I simply typed in blown. Results came back mostly empty from the big hitters like eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook, except for a few junkers that had the bad kind of blown engine. But there was a result from Hemmings Motor News. Honestly, I hadn't even thought about HMN since I had a subscription when I was about 10 years old. And there it was, that famous screaming fire chicken, with a blower in its beak, near Cleveland, Ohio."