[jhein]

I recently made contact with one of the previous owners of my car. It was the second owner who was the one who restored it. I got some interesting information but still lots of unknowns.

He bought the car in 2001 from the original owner. According to PHS the car was purchased from a dealer in MA. The story is that the original owner had a minor collision in 1974 with damage to the right rear quarter and the car was taken off the road. For some reason, the owner decided to have it repaired by a local high school body shop program. The repair was reportedly poor quality and the car sat for decades at the owners home, not driven. At some point, it lost it's original motor. Then in 2001 it came up for sale. The car was stil in MA.

The guy that restored it bought it then in 2001 and eventually restored it in 2012. He said it had no rust. He had to repair the rear quarter again, correctly. Then it sat in storage until 2016 when it was sold at a Mecim auction to the guy who I bought it from who also never drove it. So the only two people that have ever actually driven the car to any extent are the original owner and me.

When I got the car the odometer was at 8165. I tried to ascertain (from the guy who restored it) whether the speedometer was replaced during the restoration but never got an answer on that question.

Based on the story, as told, I'm wondering if that was the actual mileage on the car? Really, it's just a point of curiosity because there's no way I could ever prove that without some kind of documentation, but it is an interesting question to me.

There are some problems with the idea though. First, if that is the real history of the car, why did it lose the original motor? Sure, it could have had a catastrophic failure. Or, maybe the original owner sold the motor because he wasn't using the car. Second, when I got the car it had a 4.88 rear gear in it. I suppose the original owner may have had a reason to do that. Maybe drag racing, which could explain why the original motor is gone. But, I guess a car that was just used for fun and drag racing may well have had low miles??

OTOH, when I got the car, it had a bent right rear axle. That would be consistent with a right rear quarter collision. Also, if that were the case, if the car had a bent axle and was being driven, that surely would have come to light. So the fact that it still had this bent rear axle when I got the car would suggest that it really hasn't been driven since the accident in 1974.

Anyway, I just thought the whole thing was moderately interesting. It would be kinda cool if the car really is an 8000 mile car. I'd like to learn more about this but unfortunately, I'm probably not going to get any more information at this point. So that's that.