Ok, at this point, the gentleman painting the car told me I should do the interior over first,
before the paintjob goes any further, because of the risk of the upholstery shop guys scratching the paint.
After all, they do have to take out the front and rear windows.
AND, since I had mentioned that I wanted to get air conditioning in this car,
(gotta have my cold air, I HATE the heat) this was the point to address that too.
SO... no paintjob yet. Off to the interior / upholstery / air conditioning shop it went!

And THAT is where our story takes an ugly turn. Ok, two ugly turns.
Excellence takes two things; time and money. I was prepared for the cost in greenbacks,
but not in calendar pages. My car has been there for what seems like half my adult life,
but of course it's only a timespan measurable in months. Several months, however..
It's not even their fault really, I can't bitch; a chain of events no one could forsee happened:
The air conditioning pressure hoses were not crimped hard enough so they ALL leaked refrigerant,
so they were sent back to the manufacturer to be re-done or replaced,
THEN a bad circuit board in the main control unit for the A/C,
so THAT had to be shipped back and replaced and then re-installed...
THEN custom work up front to get the A/C condenser to fit, and a new radiator fan and shroud,
new sensors, sending units and wiring so the engine and fan can "talk" to eachother...

On top of all this, as soon as the car finally got close to going back for paint,
my friend and one-and-only autobody guy develops pancreatitis and an intestinal infection.
He was the same spray booth master who created this for me 20 years ago:


Anyone remember my Nova? Anywho...

The poor guy spent over two weeks in the hospital and then time on top of that out of work.
His well being is way more important to me than getting this car painted,
and through the winter, it's not like I could have driven it anyway.
Thankfully, Bernie has recovered and is back to work. Efforts on my car shall continue.

But what will the car LOOK like??
I've had a hell of a time trying to decide what kind of stripes I wanted on this car.
I just didn't want one solid color of blue, I want some cool stripes, ya know?
Call me a Guido, but I AM a child of the 60's (barely) who grew up in the 80's;
the era of big hair and racing stripes. LOL
So I sat here on my computer and used Photoshop to "paint" the original photos
that I had taken the day I bought the car.
After many (and I DO mean MANY) variations on different striping ideas and colors,
THIS is what I think I've come up with;
it's a direct cross between a 1970 Boss Mustang's striping package and
a 1970 Torino GT "Laser Stripe" on the sides:

(Remember, the images below are PHOTOSHOPPED,
I "painted" the car on the computer several times to decide on a color and stripe design.
At this moment, the car is actually flat black and sanded down at that!)



And that's where the story is right now, today, May the 20th, 2010.
Stay Tuned...