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Well, first I'll introduce myself. My name is
Jim and I first became interested in Imperials as a teenager when my Dad bought
a Midnight Blue 1971 in 1972. To make a long story short, I always loved
the car and when my father was about to dispose of it in 1979, I asked and he
gave it to me.
I learned to perform all my own maintenance on that
car and would attempt to fix just about anything. As a foolish 26
year old, I totaled the car in 1984. I pulled the engine and transmission
from the wreck and some other various and assundry parts. My intention was
to resurrect the car at some point, but as everyone knows, marriage and family
seem to push these things into the background. In 1996 when the owner of
the body shop at which the carcass resided asked what I wanted done with the
remains, I told him to dispose of it (would have been a great parts car from the
firewall back).
On Sunday this week, I took posession of my new
1971. I located this car on eBay and was the high bidder (under the
reserve). After a few weeks passed, I contacted them and we agreed on a
price under $4K. The car is currently silver, but is originally B9 Blue
(to which it will be returned). It has practically a perfect dark blue
interior. The seller claims its 32000 miles is actual and produced fairly
convincing documentation beginning in 1983 at 20K miles to its current
odometer reading (still possible the original owner put on 100K in the first 9
years).
The car isn't "loaded" (no power locks, no power
seats, no cruise control, AM/FM mono), but it has leather seats, auto temp II,
floor button for the radio. Its body is very good with some rust through
behind the driver side rear wheel and some bubbling behind the passenger side
front wheel. The top is perfect and the engine/drive train seem
excellent. The car drove from Chicago to central Virginia with no problems
(and a lot of gas).
Anyway, looking forward to making this into a gem
and maybe adding a few of the options.
Jim
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