The way Aldo McCoy narrates the story, it sounds like he was there when an old Chevy broke down on the circle in Elizabeth in 1972. But he was only five years old then…

Aldo has just heard the story several times. At the time the story happened, he isn’t even familiar with “Speedy.”

So who’s Speedy?

The Asbury Park Press has this to say: “Speedy is the owner of that old 1962 Chevy Bel Air. They call him Speedy because he’s 69 years old and he still lays rubber when he leaves the parking lot in front of Aldo’s shop on Route 88. This would be consistent with the motto there at Redline Performance USA — Life’s Short, Drive Fast.”

Speedy also goes by George McCoy, no relation. Aldo and George used to live in the same neighborhood in Jackson, that’s all. George McCoy, who came to the United States from Honduras in 1955, is of Scottish descent, Aldo said.

Aldo narrates:  “The copperhead gold Chevy Bel Air with the 327 under the hood was his favorite car, his pride and joy. He was always talking about that car. Then one day in 1972 he was on his way to work and the car broke down. The guy at the gas station in Elizabeth told Speedy it was hopeless, the car was dead, and offered him $25 for the carcass.”

"It conked out a few times and started overheating," he recalled. "It stopped. It didn’t want to go any farther." Speedy took the money. Later, he entertained hesitations. But when he went back to the station that night, the car was already gone.

Enter Aldo McCoy, not a relative. He restores old cars for a living. “He’s been working on cars since he was 8 years old,” he said. “He rebuilt his first engine when he was ten in a 1962 Corvette. He was the manager of an auto parts store when he was just 17.”

Now Aldo runs this business on Route 88 and he has a lot full of old cars he’s going to restore. He’s always looking for new projects, always looking "to bring people’s dreams back to life," as he puts it. And sometimes he enlists the help of his fiancee. "She’s a wiz," said Aldo.

So in July, she’s online, scouring the postings on carfax.com, checking the VIN numbers and previous owners and so forth, and she comes across this ‘62 Chevy, a Bel Air, 2-door coupe. She shows it to Aldo. This is the car, the car he’d been hearing about ever since he started hanging out with Speedy.

"It’s like finding a needle in a haystack," Aldo says. Next thing he knew, he was driving up to Hamden, Connecticut, where the car was ‘just sitting there on a farm, rotting away.’

"Wouldn’t that be a great business to go into, finding people’s old cars for them?" he wondered. "It would be like finding a missing relative." Very true. There is always hope.