Recently, a coworker told me about a Coronet for sale that was being stored in my company's warehouse. According to his observation, it was in good shape, and sounded well worth the $6,200 asking price. It had a slant six in it, but that could easily be swapped out and replaced with a much more respectable V8 of a larger displacement. I made a call to a friend, who was VERY interested, so much so that if it was a solid car, he'd be willing to buy it without a second thought.
Today I managed to make it over to the warehouse for work. Initially, I thought the car looked pretty solid as I walked up. Without much inspection of the body, I dropped to the floor to check out the underside. I few quick pokes found that the floor was pretty rotted out in several places. The frame where the torsion bars attach were ate up by rust pretty good as well, as was other parts of the structural support.Such a shame, as I would guess that the odometer reading 60,000 miles was very likely original judging by everything else I saw. The interior looked all original, was in very good shape, and had that very musty old car smell too it, which is most likely attributed to the rusted out underside in this case. The doors, jams, and under the hood all looked to be in very good condition as well. Closer inspection of the body shown signs of a quick and dirty half assed paint job. While whoever laid the paint down seemed to do a decent job, the body man didn't know what they were doing. The bondo in the wheel wells was very apparent, with the back sides of the wheel well lips packed a good inch thick.
The slant six, as well as everything under the hood, all looked very neat and tidy, just like it just came from the factory. The rear end was whatever the weak rearend is that would come behind a slant six. I didn't count, but it looked similar to GM's 10 bolt, with the cap on the rear, as opposed to a pig style setup.
It makes me sad to see cars like this, as they may be on their last leg without the right owner. Everything that I saw could be fixed, the car could be saved, but it would take a lot of effort by somebody willing to put in the time and money. Instead of the right kind of owner, somebody who knows little about cars will likely buy it, over paying of course, and drive it until the car literally splits in half from rusting out. Neither my Camaro nor my Challenger was in this bad of shape, yet it is the kind of project I would like to tackle some day. I guess I always look at it as, somebody has gotta do it, or they'll end up in the scrap yard and nobody will enjoy them. Perhaps I enjoy the car hobby so much because I've never looked at it from an investment point of view. In fact, many of my modifications will actually lower the value of the vehicle, but that is what it takes sometimes to achieve my personal tastes.
