Pretty long story Barry.....I grew up in Missouri a small town of about 1000 people and sold the car when I went in the service ion 1982. I had wanted to find the car for quite some time but like you I had no numbers to go off of either, being a small town I did quite a bit of looking around and talking to friends whenever I was back there on vacation, picked up quite a few leads but nothing really materialized until about 15-16 years ago I was going through some old boxes and I found the vehicle inspection form from the change of ownership when I purchased the car, I now at least had the VIN. On a whim I wrote to the Missouri Dept of Revenue and requested info on the car. We all know they are not supposed to give that info out but they sent me a copy of the last registration from 1988 anyway. I did some digging and found a current phone number for the last registered owner (Randy) in 1988 and gave him a call. Not the most honest or forthcoming with information sort of guy but he did tell me he traded the car for a Firebird in 1988 but didn't know the guys name he traded it to. I gave up on it for 3-4 years then I thought I would call Randy again and see if he might remember anything else. Turns out his amnesia cleared up over time and he told me he traded it to a guy named Phillip in Quincy, Mo who was our age, Phillip later told me him and Randy were friends who worked on cars together frequently thats why I say Randy was not so honest. I knew that Quincy population of about 50 was too small for a High School and the kids there went to Weaubleau HS. I jumped on Classmates.com and looked up Weaubleau HS class of 1982 and bam there was one Phillip in the class of 40 kids. This is where I got really lucky, FB was just getting popular and so I went on FB and Phillip had an account, I messaged him with my phone number and the very next day he called me and told me he still had the car at his parents in a shed......but he had used it to repair his 68 GTO so there wasn't much left but he would give me the car if I wanted it. I jumped on plane out of San Francisco a couple weeks later and went and looked at the car. He wasn't kidding, it was rough, not only was all the stuff Phillip took off gone but over the years thieves stole parts off of it. I decided I would take it though, borrowed a chain saw from my cousin and got a hold of a buddy who ran a wrecker service and we dug it out in 2013. Another Missouri winter or two and the shed would have crushed the car so the timing was perfect.