“I’d been after this car for 20 years,” Michael Lightbourn said. He first spotted this Camaro in a rural neighborhood in El Paso, Texas, in 1990. Initially he simply knocked on the door of the house and asked the lady who answered if the ’69 Camaro in her backyard was for sale. The answer was no. Her son was going to “fix it up.”

Yet the car didn’t move. It sat there year after year. Michael didn’t give up. He kept checking on the Camaro with the RS/SS badges.

Then one day the Camaro disappeared. The house was vacant. Apparently the family had moved. He didn’t know where or if they had sold the Camaro. Oh well, he had tried his best.

A few months later, while driving down Interstate 10 in El Paso, Michael spotted what appeared to be the hideaway headlights of a first-generation Camaro. Could this car be the same ’69 he [...]