Wow, well that was a pretty exciting ride for a while! Turns out, according to Mr. Mellow, that the car almost definitely isn't an original Z car. That would have been really cool, though!
I think maybe, and this is just speculation, the car may have been drag raced at one time. The interior has been completely replaced with a standard interior. It appears it may have been gutted at one time, then thrown back together with the cheapest available. Also, when someone removed the console they took the tach out and put the gas gauge in the bezel on the right, so now I have a small tach mounted on the steering column. It has had a spoiler added to it. I added the front spoiler myself and the SS emblem in the grill was missing when I got it. It also has a '68 bumper in the front.
The car currently has a 350 in it. I was told the engine was from a '69 model camaro, but that wasn't told to me by any credible source. It has 4 wheel drum brakes. It has interior courtesy lights on the inside of the C pillars (or the remnants.. just empty bezels now). No power steering, no power brakes, no air conditioning, no power windows.
I have always thought the frame was bent. Before the dealership closed down my father had the body shop he always did business with take the car and attempt to straighten the frame/body. They said it was straight. We began looking and it seems like the driver side spring in the rear has collapsed or become weak and to compensate the previous owners put washers on the spring mount to raise that side of the car. It's a pretty sad looking setup.
There is a little bit of the original turquoise color left on the inside of the door. I could get a picture of it if anyone was interested for any reason.
On the plus side, I had it aligned today and it turned out well.
Concerning the dealership: Yes, there was so much corruption on that city council board. There was actually a scandal involving the person responsible for beginning building judicial buildings around kentucky and a construction company that built them all having family members that were using their ties to do bad things.