Car's restoration a tribute to soldier

RALEIGH -- While fixing Humvees in the Middle East, Air Force Master Sgt. Arvo Kovamees would dream about that busted, purple muscle car that sat in the carport outside his Goldsboro duplex.

He'd make the 1970 Plymouth Road Runner convertible roar again, he thought to himself. But he'd been saying that for years.

On Saturday, he laid eyes on it for the first time since May.

But it wasn't the broken-down beast he left behind. Its 440-cubic-inch six-barrel V-8 engine rumbled, the dented quarter panel was fixed. Rust disappeared.

His friends had restored it, finishing it with a gleaming Mopar sublime green, unbeknownst to Kovamees. They crowded into the garage of a North Raleigh home and lured him there for a welcome-home cookout.

When he got to the driveway, they opened the garage. His jaw dropped, he clasped his hands on his mouth, stood in shock for a minute and then gasped: "Oh my God. How? How?"

He recognized only the Department of Defense decal in the front window, the purple fuzzy dice dangling from the rear-view mirror, the license plate that said "Arvo" and the "beep-beep" Road Runner horn that could chase any foolish coyote off a canyon cliff.

His reaction was the climax of a 23-year saga about a military man who has been stationed all over the world. It's also about the odyssey of the car he adored and the woman who put up with it.

It's a tale of close friends who wanted do something special for a guy who served three tours in the Middle East. It's about gearheads who took vacation time and lost sleep for a guy they had never met.

And it's about the bogus tale they weaved to keep him in the dark until Saturday.

Fantasy car

It started when Kovamees bought the car in 1984. He had just enlisted and was driving a new car, when he saw it driving down the road with "for sale" signs in the window. He chased it down and bought it that very day.

"It was childhood fantasy car," Kovamees said. "And that it was a convertible made it even better."

He spent almost any extra cash he could on it -- he even took a second job. The restored car graced the cover of Muscle Cars magazine in March 1991.

But as his career with the Air Force took more of his time, the car was neglected.

He stored it in a friend's Missouri barn while he was stationed in Korea. A year after returning, he was sent to Japan and his car went back to the barn. He reunited with it four years later before heading back to Korea. The car headed back to the barn.

He was transferred to New Mexico; the car came. When he was sent to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in 2002, he towed it to Goldsboro. It was undriveable.

"Everything had rotted," recalled David Brown, Kovamees' friend and host of the surprise party.

Car interrupted

Kovamees vowed to resurrect it.

But just as he got started, so did the Iraq war. He was sent to the Middle East three times. First to Iraq, then to Kuwait and then to the United Arab Emirates. Each tour interrupted his progress.

Before the third tour, Ray Munsch, Brown and a few other friends of Kovamees hatched a secret plan to fix the car's engine before he came back in December. They called it "Project Arvo."

After Kovamees left, they took the car to Munsch's garage in North Raleigh and went to work.

Munsch enlisted the help of the regional chapter of The Porsche Club of America. And as word about the project spread, more people and companies offered services, parts and donations.

The ordeal would have cost about $20,000, Brown said. "And we just wanted to get it running."

They soon found out Kovamees would return from the Middle East three months early. They scrambled for a bogus reason as to why his car wouldn't be in the carport when he returned.

His wife Regina told him that a general officer ordered it removed from base because it was leaking oil, and that it was taken to Brown's garage for storage.

Meanwhile, Brown, Munsch and a couple dozen other Porsche Club members scurried to finish.

What had been a weekend affair soon became an around-the-clock effort to finish it by Saturday.

Many took vacation from their 9-to-5 jobs to help out. Others worked past midnight on weekdays. By Saturday morning, they were still tweaking the car, their hands greasy as Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville" played in a stereo in the garage. Only one headlight worked, and they weren't sure yet if the motor would turn.

Only three of the dozen who were working on the car at the time had actually met Kovamees.

One worker wondered if he actually existed, joking that his fictitious legend was actually a ploy by Munsch to get free auto parts.

But on Saturday, they met Kovamees. They thanked him for his military service.

He hugged them, drank beer with them and thanked them.

"I didn't think I'd live to see it in this condition," he said.