Armin had really outdone himself this time. The owner of several highly exclusive vehicles who occasionally makes them available to us for a good story asked if we wanted to drive another of his muscle cars, for example the Chevrolet Camaro 350 Rally Sport. What a question! So we saddled up the chickens, as we say in these parts, and made our way over to his place. But the key and the papers weren’t everything Armin gave us. He was also holding an envelope in his hands, inserted into a transparent plastic sleeve. Inside were five folded letter-size pages. Handwritten in clearly legible English forty-nine years ago by the first American owner. Better than any test report we’ve ever written (thanks for the compliment). He didn’t reveal anything else. Only that he himself had bought the car in a wretched condition from a guy in the Netherlands and that he had carried out a full restoration. The Dutchman had brought the car over to Europe from across the pond. The exact number of previous owners is unknown.
First thing we did was drive the Camaro to a nearby bakery, where we went in, ordered black coffee and pored over the letter. Ballpoint pen with blue lettering. We read it twice. We had never seen anything like it before. We just knew we had to print it. Here it is, in full.
