My own project car

In the beginning

I bought this car in March of 2000 from a friend as a £330 shed. It had spent the last two years languishing in his parents front garden and it showed! I also know the previous owner to that. It was a daily driver for years belonging to another work colleague and I had always kind of admired it as I was a young apprentice at the time struggling to keep my MK1 Fiesta going. So to me this red convertible Escort was a bit upmarket. Not that it was all that pretty back then, the dash had already started to split, the roof was held together with a wide strip of black tape and the paint had faded to a pastel redish pink. He spent some money getting an expensive good quality roof fitted (which it wears to this day), a set of tyres and a new exhaust system for it. Then a month later his strapped for cash brother offered him his Astra GTE convertible for too cheap a price to refuse so the Escort had to go. Another lad from the same hangar bought it from him for the princely sum of £800 (just after I'd paid over £1000 for a 2.0ltr mk3 Granada!) and drove it around for the next two summer months until the MOT ran out. This is when it took up it's new duty as an unconventional green house where it helped cultivate all kinds of moulds and fungi.

Fast forward two and a half years on to early 2000 and after getting drunk and looking at an old car mag I get a silly idea pop into my head (which my equally pissed housemate then eggs me on with). Why don't I see if I can get him to flog me that old convertible shed! Then I can tool around in it for the summer and have some fun, then ditch it. Well, that was the plan.

I weaseled the car out of his ownership for a few hundred quid and had a fairly uneventful, if not entirely legal, two mile drive home. This was done with him following me 'just in case' (and more likely for his personal amusement!) and with the windows open to let out the smell. This drive home proved that few of the electrics worked and it was lacking a rear view mirror. However, the engine seemed OK and the brakes worked.

Whilst stripping it down and cleaning it up to prep it for an MoT another acquaintance offered to replace the rusty front panels for beer money if I sourced the panels. This seemed like a good idea to I bought the panels, cut the old ones off and he moved on. Great.

You can probably figure out the rest. A local bodywork specialist took on the job of repairing and respraying the shell and as it was the first time I had ever owned a shiny rust free car I got carried away and the whole project snow-balled.