CAVE CITY, Ky. — In 1965, Joel Tessieri was a recent graduate of the University of California in Los Angeles, driving an older Volkswagen that served him through college, but once he had a job, he saved some money for something new.

“The ‘65 [Pontiac] LeMans convertible was it,” he chuckled. “I bought it in 1965, brand new. I ordered the car, actually ordered it with the equipment I wanted on it, so it was a real new car for me. I just loved the look on it — the body, everything. … I still think it’s a beautiful car today.”

Tessieri said there were just “a little over 13,000” of that model manufactured that year, which is “very few” by today’s standards.

He had it a couple of years before selling it to his sister.

“Being a young guy and having a little bit of money, because I had a job, I then bought another car, another new car, and it was a ‘67 Olds Cutlass convertible, same coloring. I guess I like that color,” Tessieri said of the capri gold body and white top.

His sister kept it several more years.

“My nephew drove it for a while, too. She bought it, and then it sort of became his first car, so to speak, even though she owned it,” Tessieri said. “It didn’t work for him, because he liked to go surfing and skiing, and it wasn’t a surfing and skiing car.”

Fast forward to 2002.

Tommy Mitchell, in Barren County, Kentuicky, was looking for a Pontiac GTO to purchase, and his search netted a ‘65 LeMans in Bardstown — about an hour away from Cave City.

“I thought, ‘same body style, just less horsepower.’ [It] looked just like a GTO, just didn’t have the hood or the horsepower. ‘So, I’ll just go look at it,’” he said.

He ended up driving it home, while his wife Lori drove their other vehicle back.

Right after he bought the car, Mitchell started researching to find previous owners and learn the car’s history.

He found paperwork in the car with Tessieri’s name on it, and eventually was able to find a phone number for him. At the time, Tessieri was living in Hawaii, which was his home for 29 years.

Mitchell also spoke with Tessieri’s sister and tracked down two or three of the owners in between. Slowly but surely, he restored and fixed everything he could, and he put a few special touches on it, too, like a GTO steering wheel, “just to give it a little sportier look” and some ‘60’s-style nostalgic wheels, “just to sharpen it up a bit.”

“It’s still all original, basically. … We’ve enjoyed it terribly since we’ve had it,” Mitchell said, adding that they mostly just drive it to car shows and sometimes for leisure, but not for every-day transportation.

One thing he didn’t change was the UCLA alumni sticker on the front passenger wing window — that Tessieri had placed there.

He said that when he got it, it had 58,000 miles on it; now it has “right at 66,000.”

He and his wife have created their own memories in the car — taking it to many car shows, where it was always the only one that color, Mitchell said.

“Every time it’s won an award somewhere, he’s been beaming,” Lori Mitchell said.

Tommy Mitchell said he’s had others make him offers on the car over the years, but when he finally decided it was time to sell it this year, he decided to contact Tessieri again. It took a few tries, because by this time, he had moved back to California.

“If he has any interest in it, it would make me feel a lot better knowing it went back to its original owner,” Mitchell said he told himself.

Tessieri was seriously interested. He checked on emissions requirements, insurance rates, transport rates, regional resources for potential repairs and more, and then he flew to Kentucky in April.

His eyes opened wide as Mitchell eventually told him the car was actually in the parking lot during their meeting, and he took him to see it.

Tessieri said he felt “just a hair” emotional as he spied the car at the back of the lot.

He had been trying to keep the sentiment and nostalgia as separate as possible from his decision on whether to make the purchase.

The two looked at the car, discussed what had changed — like the color of the vinyl convertible roof that is now close to the color of the body — and what was still the same and more about the history of it and the GTO, which are intertwined.

The service-record booklet the dealer gave Tessieri when the first bought the car was still with it, as was a copy of the window sticker that showed the features he ordered and the price he paid back then — $3,689.72.

It was those little touches that seemed to interest him the most, and he said Mitchell had done a great job with the car.

“It’s still a beauty,” Tessieri said.

Mitchell said the idea of the LeMans possibly going back to its original owner was very exciting for him.

Tessieri said the timing was right, because if he had still been living in Hawaii, he never would have considered the purchase.

“It wouldn’t have been possible to preserve the car, because I didn’t have a garage and I lived right next to the beach, and it just doesn’t work,” he said of the ocean-air environment. The dry air of the desert is great for classic car preservation, he said.

Tessieri decided to purchase the car, and he said Tuesday from California that he was in the process of making arrangements with the transport carrier, and once that’s arranged, he would finalize the deal with Mitchell. In fact, he said, he had just returned from taking a load of items to be donated so he could free up space in his garage.

“We’re down to the last nitty gritty of the details,” he said.

He was feeling good about the transaction, and he’d had lots of encouragement from his family, Tessieri said.

Mitchell said he feels right about letting the car go in these circumstances, and he believed Tessieri was satisfied as well, so that made him feel even better.

No matter how hard he tried to separate emotion from the deal, Tessieri admitted, it obviously had an influence and gave him “a little push.”

If the nostalgia hadn’t been part of it, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble he did to get that particular vehicle, and he probably wouldn’t have even necessarily considered getting a classic car, he said.

Overstreet writes for the Glasgow, Kentucky Daily Times.