1991 we bought a GN insurance wreck that had 18,975 km's on it. I stripped it bare and had a shop replace the entire roof, floor, trunk area, everthing in one piece from another car. We had it for 9 years but an Impala SS appealed more in 2000 and it went down the road. I found some pics of it today I forgot I had taken....
-- Edited by Carl Stevenson at 21:20, 2009-01-02
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
With me, every thing is a long story.............!
It all started in the 70's. I have two older brothers. Brother W came back from BC with a 56 Monarch I believe it was. They discovered that the car had been totalled and someone had made 2 cars into one. Brother B has been a car nut as long as he has been breathing, had an auto wrecking his whole life until a couple of years ago. He fixed many wrecks, many of them G bodys. (Cutlass, Regal, Monte, etc) Often he would fix them the same wasy as the Monarch was fixed.
You cut through the middle of the windshield pillars so that he bottom half of the pillar is original car. Top half of the pillar is donor car. Cut from side to side of the car about right under where the front people's feet would be on the floor when they are sitting in the front seat. You make those 2 cuts, undo the rear electrical and roll it up to the front, gut the interior, undo the body bolts and voila, lift the roof, trunk floor, quarter panels and interior floor off the frame in one piece. Do the same to your donor car and plunk it down on the GN frame.
I gutted the car leaving the powertrain in. It still ran and drove as you see it there. Off it went to the neighbour's body shop. If you've seen pictures I posted of a butternut yellow 67 SD396 4 speed belonging to my neighbour. He's the guy who painted it and then I reassembled the puzzle.
This car was untouched from the front of the door gaps forward. Every other panel was wrinkled excluding the trunk lid. It was T-boned by a transit bus. I went to visit the 50 year old lady original owner who had turned left in front of the bus. She said the car was jinxed. I kept quiet , but in my mind turning left in front of a bus is not a jinxed car............... I searched the car and found the production date. It was a late car, 1 month from the end of production of GN's. Oh, the day it was built. November 13th, 1987. Guess what day of the week Nov 13th is??!!!
It was never jinxed for me. We enjoyed 9 years of it, nothing jinxed about it!
Oh, and having seen that done, I would tackle the next one myself. It involves welding the 2 windshield pillar cuts and a seam all the way across the floor above the rear of the transmission. Simple when you think about it. The rest is bolt on.
-- Edited by Carl Stevenson at 21:19, 2009-01-02
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
Seldom do you see a wreck for sale. I looked at one other one when this was for sale an it was a piece of junk. 22,000 miles, t-tops broken and sitting out in the rain like that. Tires totally shot at 22,000 miles. I sold ours with 24,000 miles on it with better than half tread on the original tires and the car was mint.
I paid $6400 for that car wrecked and had it finished for 11,500 including all taxes etc. It was a great deal. There's no deals like that around on them now.
And while it was fun to own and it would be fun to have another, I don't long for it like I do for a 4 speed big block Grande Parisienne.
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1966 Strato Chief 2 door, 427 4 speed, 45,000 original miles
1966 Grande Parisienne, 396 1 of 23 factory air cars
You just don't see desireable cars like that GN being sold as wrecks any more. I think a lot of it has to do with the insurance regulations and consumer protection laws to protect people from being sold cars with salvage titles. The problem is there are a lot of hack, shady, backyard shops throwing pieces of wrecked cars together and not doing a very good job and misleading the public by selling them as never wrecked cars, I'm sure we've all seen the shows on W5, etc. If everyone did a job like Carl it would be no problem but unfortunately it seems Carl is the the exception that proves the rule!
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Hillar
1970 LS4 (eventually an LS5) Laurentian 2dr hdtp -and a bunch of other muscle cars...
