The fire melted the carb, destroyed the wiring looms, relays, brake servo, air horns, front grilles, headlamp assembles and all of the rubber in the engine compartment. I can only assume the dash was pulled for installation of a “new” wiring harness (which had French Blue paint – or Blu Cannes as I believe the Mothership referred to it). Blue paint was also present on the headlamp buckets as well as that horrible yellow paint beloved by auto wrecking yards.
Why the carpet was pulled remains a mystery. Someone did apply POR15 to the floor which probably was Not a Bad Thing. POR15 was also applied to parts of the engine compartment, again Not A Bad Thing…
On Rob Cantania’s excellent 124 Coupe site (http://www.124sportcoupe.com) this car is represented as a 5,000 mile example, regrettably I think that is incorrect. I could see it being 105,000 mile car however. There was remarkably little corrosion on the car and no welding appears to have been carried out. The dash and console are not cracked (yet!) and the seats were reupholstered with nasty domestic vinyl and the European style cloth inserts (which are sun faded).
I like cars to be as stock as possible and represent the European version as much as possible, hence my plan of attack was the following:
1: Locate a 1608 motor as well as 40IDF’s, a factory air box and European pistons and hopefully a Marelliplex.
2: Cromodoras (though I always thought the steel wheels and hub caps were quite handsome) with the
Correct 165 HR 13 Michelin XAS tires
3: Cadmium plating for most of the fasteners and brake lines.
4: Replace / refurnish the suspension and driveline. Powercoat misc. parts.
5: Remove the hideous North American side marker light assemblies
6: Fit European lights and bumpers sans overiders
7: Recarpet, reupholster and replace the headliner.
The car came with boxes of parts, some of which were for Spiders and X1/9’s as well as 3rd generation (CC) Coupes. I was fortunate that more pieces were not lost along the way, the only piece I have never been able to locate is the silver plate for the engine compartment that shows the VIN and paint code.
And so the journey began, I gave myself a budget (which of course I exceeded dramatically) and thought it would take a year, that time was also exceeded dramatically!
