To Be Or Not To be …

Right, now I have the car that I am interested in restoring … and it is always exciting when your ‘new’ car arrives and the term new is used in the widest possible way.
I pushed it into the ‘shed’ with the help of my able bodied assistant and ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer’ … errrr, Financial Controller to the rest of you :o).

This car is new … it is new for me, and that’s all that matters. Isn’t it funny, that you have in your mind exactly where it’s going to sit (shed, yours or your friends, my Alfa ended up being pushed into a friend’s shed and it spend nearly a year there, being restored but it was only a partial restoration … I’m not sure how long I could have had it sitting in my friend shed, if it was a full restoration). Anyhow, you think you know where all the parts will be located. Well, I do anyway. You start planning in your head how you will attack the project. For me it was … where are all the parts? The seat? The door trims? The air filter housing ? I started scratching around in the front of the car and started finding all sorts of things in boxes, in buckets, lying on the floor, starter motor, alternator (or is this a generator … hmmm … later) oh … door cards, locks, handles, water pump fan, 2 fans … 3 fans?? Hmmm, chrome hinges … nice touch … bumpers, lights. What is this? Looks like an air-conditioning system … really? I’ll come back to that later. That’s when I remembered that I have to return the car trailer, before I get charged another days hire.

When I got home, that’s when the questions started … is the car that I have here as close to the original as possible? Was it modified? It has what looks like a 3 speed auto fitted. That’s not original! Do I want the car to be original? Do I want to get it back to original? I think so! Maybe! Definite maybe! Yes! A V8 in there would be nice … 253? 308? … 350 Chev.

To be or not to be … is the HR to be returned to ‘original’? How difficult will it be? Will I ever find out what it was originally fitted with … 161?, 186? Auto? Manual? Could I have hooked an X2? ( … really wishful thinking!!!)
Does it matter? How hard will it be to get back to ORIGINAL. How much, more or less, might that be? Then, the conversations that I had with friends after I picked up the HR … started … and that’s when I discovered that there are 3 lines of thought.

1. Mine … it would be fantastic to get the car back to as if it had just rolled off the production floor … albeit 45 years late!!!
2. Restore the car as you would any other and get it looking like it has been looked after, like most cars, for 45 years.
3. Bring the car up to scratch with my own (read: many of my friends suggested) touches. Turn it into a sleeper. Standard on the outside with a SBC under the bonnet!!!!

My head is starting to hurt, let me put her away, I have plenty of time to think about it … :o)