beater cars

Other than some real future 'show car' project car (I can't choose - but it wouldn't be a unibody car), I won't get a car with anymore than an OBDII computer. Anything newer just doesn't grab my eye.

Which reminds me... I saw my original 1955 Studebaker President coupe restoration yesterday when my wife and I took the bus to go shopping! The same guy that traded me his new Lincoln and $5K for it! I saw it in the parking lot and waited for him. He remembered me, and told me he'd won more awards for it and was going to a Stude club meet. He's gonna get me the names of the new people on the club's board.

It was 1978. I was driving it down to a shopping mall when this Lincoln just came out of a big Lincoln/Mercury dealership and honked and tried to get alongside me. I'd just finished restoring it and was on my way home from work. Anyway, he finally got my attention and we pulled over in the mall parking lot. I had picked my paint scheme before the Ford Tiger Eye colour came out in 1978. I worked at a huge aircraft maintenance firm as production controller. I'd heard that we had obsolete jet paint and found out that we bought MIL-spec paint which could be dyed. They gave me 3 gallons. Turns out, that the colours I wanted could be done. So I got the Tiger-eye (deep bronze) and dark brown to get the two-tone scheme looking classy. I also got some deep bronze leather skins (used for first class sections on executive planes) to reupholster the car with and some dark brown accent leather for the headliner and door panel inserts.

His Lincoln was exactly the same motif, except that he got the dark brown velours interior. It was one of those Bill Blass Anniversary Lincolns with the little diamonds in the portholes. Nice car. Actually too much car for me. I wasn't ready for a long boat (I decided later).

Anyway, he offered the car and the $5,000! I told him there was only one problem. I promised the original owner to lend it to him for a week. The fellow was a farmer friend, who bought the car new and took his wife cross-country in it for their honeymoon. He gave me the car, and full access to his huge repair shop (prairie tractors are BIG) to do the restoration. I had that car dunked at work, one fender at a time, and then the frame and then the entire body in all the different derusting, degreasing and alodine/galvanizing tanks they used for passenger wings!

Then they dipped it in anti-corrosion paint and baked it. When I saw it yesterday, I asked him if he ever saw rust. He opened the trunk, and pulled out one of those special convex mirrors they use to search cars at the border, and told me that he won most of his awards because it was better than new! It was spotless. Not one speck! What a treat!

Nah, it wasn't a G-job, either. I paid the company $2,000 for all that, back in 1977. We used to charge $8,000 per wing, for all that prep work. But the VP was a car-buff and gave me a break.

 

wow norm what a deal

 

I was driving a 1962 Buick 2-door in mint shape back then, and when I applied for the job, the VP came down and held the interview in my car, trying to hide the drool. My direct boss and he were in a bidding battle to buy it from me, once I had the Stude done! Funny stuff. My boss bought it, when the VP got himself a 1955 Nomad. Peace. I sweated that one. Really thought I'd lose my job.

 

That 2.2 might be the same which powered the Talbot Tagora, Peugeot 505 Turbo, Matra Murena and Citroen BX.
It would have been interesting, if the Tagora would have been more successful when Chrysler headquarters had kept their noses out:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_Tagora