I really, REALLY appreciate everyone's support. I do not really know any of you personally but it's so odd how I'd rather pour my heart out to a bunch of strangers about this loss then my own family or friends. As I said prior, it is simply a matter of you are a bunch of true car kooks like me and only you can possibly understand. Only you all understand that the bell housing on these cars has a "special" bolt that is so important. Or how to solve a bouncing idle or sticky door handles. If it wasn't for this forum I'd have never had that sense of accomplishment of making #1607 such a reliable DD for my son. So thank you.
Ironically, a few weeks ago, I was planning on posting a story on these forums about my first GVR4, #1337 but on November 19th I was diagnosed with something called Sick Sinus Syndrome which is a heart condition where my heart suddenly stops receiving electrical signal and stops. So on Nov 20th, just, what.. 16 days ago?... wow... I had surgery to install a Pacemaker. 50 years old, healthy, own a bicycle retailer and ride road and mountain bikes all the time and I get a freaking Pacemaker! Bad F'ing luck. So anyways I never got to memorialize #1337. I say memorialize because I sold the car in 2001, with 9800 miles on it (yes, 10 years old with 10K on the odo) for $15,000 to a guy named Andy. So I stayed in touch with Andy over the following 15 years... "Andy, how is the Galant doing?". "Andy, if you ever sell it, please give me a call" I'd bug the sh*t out of him as I never should have sold it in the first place. Well Andy let the car deteriorate to the point where it not longer ran and he did not drive it. So in Aug of 2016 Andy tells me he took the car to a mechanic to try and get it going again. Tragically the shop caught fire and #1337 was incinerated along with a number of other customer cars.
Purchased #1337 brand new (special order) from Carlsbad Mitsubishi in Carlsbad CA. Had 8 miles on the odo when it arrived... I FORCED my then 64 year old father to buy it as he kept buying Honda Accords and I wanted to spice up his life. He LOVED the Galant but was retired and only drove it on short trips. I purchased the car from him a few years later with around 5,000 miles on it, added some 16' Konig Tuner wheels (lol) and H&R lowering springs. Everything else was still stock. Also, I know a lot of you are younger then me so you may not have this perspective but a 1991 Galant VR-4 was about as technologically advanced thing as you could buy. Only the 3000GT VR-4 and the Porsche Carrera 4 (and 959) were more complicated. The soft leather and the fantastic build quality of the Galant VR-4 when new was really something different. It smelled amazing.
So the really ironic thing about this story is that this past weekend, just hours before the fire claimed #1607, I took a picture of it in the exact location where I took a picture of #1337 some 20 years ago. (Look how much that palm tree has grown!) While the background has changed quite a bit over the years it is really weird to see both cars in the same spot and both lost due to fire. I'm probably going to take the hint and stay away from damaging any more of these unique cars...
