My daughters have never been tremendously interested in my automotive pursuits. That’s not something that has ever bothered me or that I’ve tried to impose upon them. I try to expose them to what I’m doing and if they’re interested that’s great, but if it’s just not something that they want to be involved in, that’s perfectly okay too. When my oldest started approaching her 16th birthday, however, she started noticing cars more and more. Of course she was excited to get her license and find in it the same freedom and entry to adulthood that I found all those years ago and I encouraged that excitement as we would point out cool cars to each other when we were out and about. As her birthday got closer and closer, talk turned to how she would learn to drive and what vehicle would become the outlet for that education. That’s when I floated the idea: What if we found a car and worked together to build it for the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge? Initially I thought her positive reaction to that was more lip-service than actual interest, but as time went on I found myself getting constant reminders from her that we still needed to find a car and get started.
Naturally, my first place to look for a car was the GRM forum. Scrolling through, I found an ad that had been up for a few months with some commensurate price decreases:
Sitting south of Louisville, KY, the car was only about 2 hours away from me. It was being sold by a forum member, which meant that I was probably dealing with a stand-up guy (spoiler alert: Damn right he is!). It was advertised as needing a new ignition switch and fuel pump along with a new top and tires. The headlight adjusters were broken and it had been sitting for 9 years. The tank was said to be full of bad gas but the only other downside was the fact that it’s an automatic. Powar, the forum member who had the car for sale, had originally bought it to be used as a parts car, but decided that it was just a little too nice to cut in to. It was either going to be sold to the GRM family or it was going to go sit in his parts car collection until he needed to scavenge from it.
When I saw the ad had bubbled to the top again, I texted my daughter and got a resounding – uh, something,
With that ringing endorsement, I set about making a deal. A few days later, we hooked up the trailer to go take a look.
For the princely sum of $750, I had adopted an orphan and was ready to start dragging it out of its slumber.