Sean Tobin had only the broadest strokes of a plan when he walked into a Dodge dealership in 1989, but he sensed his life was about to change in a big way. Did he buy a Dodge? Nope. Not even close. “I was driving down Van Nuys Boulevard. I saw the car out of the corner of my eye and immediately did a U-turn. It was on the front line, and I went straight for it. I knew the Grand Am. I’m one of those geeks. I knew it had to be only a 400 or a 455, that’s all they made it in. I knew if the emblem said ‘7.4 Litres’ then it had to be a 455.”
The ER nurse from Mission Viejo, California, was 25 at the time when he’d been driving through town on another task. He experienced a powerful flashback to the mid-1970s—to
