For some, the “one that got away” is a lost love interest, while for others, it’s a fish, or a 10-point buck. For those of us passionate about automobiles, it may well be the one deal we (foolishly) walked away from or, in the case of Hemmings Muscle Machines reader Joel McKee, the deal we simply couldn’t close.

In the late 1980s, while traveling backroads outside the city of Dallas, Georgia, Joel spotted a car sitting abandoned on a rural property. At first glance, it appeared to be an ordinary 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu, but a closer look reveled it to be something far less common: a one-of-201-built Malibu SS Z16 coupe, the one-year-only model that introduced the big-block V-8 into the Chevelle product range.

Does anyone know the fate of this derelict Z16 that once was located outside Dallas, Georgia?