The car has been in the hands of three generations in the family.
Having your car stolen is a terrible feeling, especially as a car person when you have a deeper connection to your car than most. Now add in a huge helping of sentimental value, and being a victim of car theft can feel awfully personal. That's the scenario one family had to cope with after a modified 1988 Pontiac Firebird was stolen recently.
The stolen 1988 Firebird has a gut-wrenching backstory behind its ownership, and is not a car the family could easily forgot about. It first started off in the family being owned by the now owner's dad. His dad died too soon in a tragic motorcycle accident in 2011. After his father's death, the Firebird went onto belong to the owner's grandfather, who passed away last year, and the car came home with him.
When the owner was hard at work as a valet at the Bass Pro Pyramid in Memphis, TN, thieves took advantage of the distracted owner to lift the Firebird from the parking lot. While the owner was off fetching a customer's car, his was being stolen out from under his nose. This isn't even the owner's main transportation to work, and had only been driving the modern classic Firebird because his car broken down; so on any other day, the Firebird would have been safe at home.
The account of the incident explains that two cars pulled up to the Firebird while the owner was away from it, a third person got out to break into the lock and hotwire the car, and was gone in about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. The owner returned to the area where the car was parked just in time to see his beloved f-body being driven off, with no way to stop it.
