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It was a great night. My daughter & I had went to the club meeting and had enjoyed visiting with everyone.

We were driving home talking about school and shtuff. We were coming up to an intersection in the middle lane with a car on our right and three SUV’s in the left turn lane. As I passed the front SUV and was making my way into the intersection, this Buick skids into the intersection and slams into the side of my Barracuda, pushing us into the right lane. We just barely missed hitting the car in that lane.

Here are the pics…

At first I thought I would just fix the ’65 and still go on with the total restoration of the ’66. I took the ’65 down to a friend’s body shop and had them straighten the a-pillar and check for proper uni-body alignment. They were able to put it all back to factory specs.

After this, Doug [a friend] and I started to do the repairs. The door, fender, valance, and grill all came off. I had a spare door and fender that Doug reconditioned. He does really great work! We got them back on and aligned.
Doug then repaired the valance, which was a real mess. It looked like someone had taken a ball-peen hammer and played ‘Taps’ on it. Doug ended up spending almost 30 hours on the valance alone! I sure wish someone made more replacement parts for these old Barracudas!

Here are some pics…

As we were putting the valance back on, I got to thinking about how much work we had already done...thought about what I wanted to do with the car...and got this crazy idea that I should just start a total restoration on this car first. I still don’t think Doug see’s my ‘logic’, but being the good friend he is, he just nodded his head and smiled.
[I think he thought it a good idea too!]

So, as the thought passed through my mind, I reached over, picked up a wrench, and started totally stripping the car.