Clickbait title.
I've been on this forum for a while, mostly lurking, buying and selling parts and cars and jumping into conversations when I think I have something to say, which isn't very often. My favorite type of thing to read here are the build threads and I always wanted to have a car and a build worthy of documenting. I think I'm building one now, so I'm going to show my version.
A little backstory on the car:
I found this '85 Carrera in late 2015 on the PCA classifieds. The son of the original owner was selling for his mother who took ownership after his father passed. He and his mother had been driving the car sparingly in the last couple years and mom thought it was time to let it go. The car sounded driver-quality, and it was priced right.. I was planning on picking it up and driving back home, fixing a few things, and selling it (which I shared with the seller). Figured I'd have an adventure, experience a Carrera of my own for a while, and make a couple bucks. The car was out in DC, I'm in San Diego. The car sounded solid enough - Ran and drove fine, well-loved with ~186k miles, all records from new, a restoration around 2001, not too much rust (ahem..), and a recent brake job - replacing all flex lines, calipers, pads, and 2 rotors. I was emailed a 30 second clip of the car running, and a few photos.. good enough for me to wire a deposit, get a cashiers check and a one-way plane ticket! Oh, and I mailed a bunch of hand tools the week before the trip, so I wouldn't be completely boned if something happened out on route 66 solo, in the middle of the night. Foolproof plan.
The trip was fun. 2700 miles in 2.5 days. I really wish I would have taken more time, more photos, noise-cancelling headphones and an ipod full of music or a Walkman or something. DC to Nashville in one day (in that hurricane - dumping rain 80% of the time), slept 4 hours in the car in a parking structure. Second day to Amarillo, rented the finest $40 hotel I could find and crashed for 6 hours, then took the back way through 29 palms on my way home - out in the desert where it was windy and raining.
Anyway.. got the car back, decided not to do much to it after all because I couldn't set a cutoff point if I were to get into it.. You make one thing look nice and everything around it would look like doo-doo. So the new plan was to throw it up for sale and see what happens.. Well, nothing much happened. A few commitments and a lot of runaround and I decided to keep it and do something with it later. I knew it'd be a hot-rod because I don't think the world needs another bone-stock silver Carrera. No offense to anybody who has one - I just saw this car as an opportunity to do something fun.
I kept going back and forth on what to do. Or thrashing around, I guess. Colormatch IROC fiberglass bumpers and a duckbill? Paint IROC bumpers Martini colors and keep the body silver? Backdate to '73RS? Naaaaaahhhhh.. A Carrera coupe is a good jump-off for so many different options..
In the end, I decided on a narrow-body '74 IROC-inspired car. Funky 70s color, short hood, smooth rockers, no flares, duckbill, RSR-style 16x7s and 8s. I wanted a single flag mirror and bright window trim. Racy stripped-down interior, but nice materials - something original, and still comfortable. And body color was making it's way inside, inspired by some of the Singer cars. Lose some weight, do a mostly factory rebuild but add a little reliable and smoggable power (euro P/C, chip and injector upgrade, exhaust). Nothing over the top anywhere, but definitely not stock, and hopefully something fresh. Oh, and working AC and heat.
Right now the car is painted, engine is built, most everything is refinished and it's being re-assembled as time permits. I'll post the photos I've taken along the way in the coming days and get this thread updated in real time as the car goes back together.