Club Members,

I’ve always wanted to write a letter on restoring the perfect find. My find was a 74 B, with Sabrina’s. Odometer showed 59 thou. Bought from an original owner, garaged kept, original top, you could even see out of the back windows. Came with a like new hardtop, & best of all an Am/Fm 8 track. Big dent in the quarter, little ones all around. As original as it came from the dealer. Under the bonnet everything was original. Looking underneath, no rot! The price was right & we bought it.

Took it to my friend Jim at A1 body shop in Oak Lawn. Learned a lot about dent repair & painting. Tried to do it the right way by taking everything off the car before painting. Re spray inside the door jams, doors were stripped of everything to re paint & new rubber installed. Trunk respray. All in the original color of Bracken. Four months later & a lot of sweat, it was a beauty. Jim’s shop made it look like new again.

Now the sad part. It was parked outside in front of our Midget. A drunk driver took the corner too fast, clipped the left front of our Midget pushing it out of the way, so our freshly restored B could be rear ended & shoved under the Saturn parked in front of it. The Saturn wound up on top of our B, and the Saturn hit the neighbors van with its front end. I ran down to the end of the street where the drunk was stopped, he was trying to pull body pieces, wedged under his car, that kept him from “running”. Of course, he had no insurance. Glad we do. Full Coverage. What do you say to the person that just tried to run after destroying all of your efforts in a flash? A lot of thoughts go through your mind & all of them would wind me up in jail. So you just say come back with me and I’ll show you four months of effort on one and three months on the other, gone in a flash, and, the police are on the way.

Why did I write this? To let our members know that when we insured our cars, we had the value upped from what they originally wanted to insure them for ($2,000 each) to stated value. I made an educated, realistic guess of $6,000 on the “B” & $4,000 on the Midget. The cost was nominal for the increase. The insurance company wanted pictures, and I was happy to oblige by driving over & had them take as many as they wanted. I have full coverage and when we store it over the winter, we call up and it’s covered for fire and theft only, for a nominal cost. Know your insurance coverage before, and sometimes saving a few bucks by “just getting by” with the minimum is a costly mistake. I’m glad we didn’t make it. I know the driver who hit our cars will probably be paying for the rest of his life with the five-car accident.

I now have three sets of pictures, before, after and wreck. Now, to decide what I want to do after the wreck. Let’s see, left quarter, both fenders, bonnet, bumpers, driver’s door, grill, and a repaint. How many months?