In the beginning…
Around the end of 2006 I had the (yet another) urge to buy another classic car to (attempt to) restore. In 2002 or so I bought a 1966 Ford Mustang off of eBay for $500. I had it for just a few months and then somehow decided the ’66 was more of a parts car. So I bought a 1964.5 Mustang and started to work restoring it.
(the 1966 is lurking in the left background)
I bought a welder and replaced quite a bit of sheet metal. The ’66 was sold off at a profit. The restoration of the ’64.5 was rolling along nicely, and then…our daughter was born. Restoration pretty much came to a halt. Then I was informed that I need to transfer to North Carolina in order to keep my job. We were in the Chicago suburbs at the time, and the prospect of pulling a car in pieces hundreds of miles didn’t sound very entertaining. So I talked to the guy I had originally bought the ’64.5 from, and he had a 1968 Ford Galaxie that was less of a project. So we did a straight trade, and he ended up having the Mustang finished by a college bodyshop – it looked awesome. He sold it on eBay. Somewhere I have the pictures of it finished, but it was exactly the way I had wanted it to turn out – down to the exterior and interior colors.
So we pulled the ’68 Galaxie to North Carolina, where it sat in the garage for a year or so.
Ultimately I sold it to my neighbor across the street, who restored it with his high school son.
The bus part of the story comes in The Beginning, Part Two…coming soon.
