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We bought the car a few miles from our house in Germantown, TN. Aside from a cassette player it was all stock, steel wheels, wood steering wheel, lap belts only, an optional 5-speed and the original 4 cylinder engine. The car was in a carport and the engine was in a closet. I think the engine had been out for a rebuild and it ran great. We installed the engine at the guy's house so we could flat tow it home.
It was badly rusted which is my 10% uncertainty. The rockers and heater channels were very porous so we did some patching and I think I recall using some spray foam. We had this black paint stuff (like POR) that came in a small, expensive bottle that we brushed on the remaining rust. I think I see some around the pedal box.
The repairs in the trunk weren't from collision damage but the torsion bar mounts were all rusted out. My dad bought replacement sheet metal then copied it for this car so we could use those pieces in another car. We didn't have a welder so he used acetylene/oxygen to braise them in.
The stock bumpers were very rusty (and had chunks of salt in them) so we painted them, and the rockers, black. The rest of the car wore the Kelly green pretty well when I drove it. The trunk latch was rusted out so it had hood pins that poked through the trunk like a race car. I think i see the holes where they were mounted in one of your pictures. The driver's door was badly damaged (by me) so I am guessing it was replaced. The back end was damaged twice when I backed into an S10 and another time when I was rear-ended at a light.
We bought it in the fall and had it ready to drive by my 16th birthday in January 1989. I drove it to school and to my job every day. I raced R/C cars a lot at the time so on the weekends I would often drive it to Nashville or Little Rock for races.
I loved driving the car, girls hated riding in it. It sounded like a Beetle to the untrained ear, it was cold in the winter, the windows were hard to roll up, the doors were hard to open, it smelled like burning oil and smoke came in through the heater vents at stop lights.
When it came time to sell, Dad fixed the door and sprayed the car red. A friend in Grenada, MS sold it off of his car lot for us, to whom I have no idea but I think it was a local. I can't quite recall but I think it had around 115,000 miles when we bought it and I would have put 35-40,000 on it.
From 15 feet away it was a rough looking car. I can't imagine why someone would choose it for a widebody conversion or add a sunroof for that matter. What you are doing looks great. Personally I would keep the wide fenders, duck tail and back date to long hood and '68 bumpers.
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