Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone!
Welcome from So Cal. Would love to hear the story of the hunt and more car pics please. Tell us more about your car restorations experience.
A little backstory on how I found the car:
I have a craigslist problem. I'm sure many of you can relate. Always looking at what's available in a variety of mostly automotive categories. Enter a Texas based classic car dealer that seems to post their adds all across the country and a listing for a 1972, gold glow, ginger interior, Q code, 4 speed car. I told my wife about how it was basically the even better version of a car we had as a kid and being the bad influence she is she immediately told me to buy it! But alas they wanted more than I was willing to pay, I hemmed and hawed and the car sold. I actually stumbled across it on the forum but can't seem to find the user now.
Anyway, that revived my interest in "big nose" Mustangs so I joined a Facebook group. Not even a week later a guy in Michigan posted a pair of cars being sold together. The one picture he had of the gold one was this:
Knowing production numbers on gold glow convertibles and seeing the frenched in antenna I was pretty confident it was the same car. The owner didn't want to sell just one, but since my dad keeps records of everything we found the bill of sale from when we sold it and were able to confirm it was the same VIN. Almost a year of back and forth later and we were able to come to an agreement to buy the car.
My dad and I flew out to buy it, drove it to my in-laws and got it shipped back. For the first few miles of the drive we seriously contemplated driving it the whole way, but it became pretty clear the car wouldn't make the trip without a bit of work.
More information about the plans/progress can be found in my build thread:
72 Convertible Road Trip Build
As for other car restorations or projects:
I can't say that I've "restored" a car before! Fans of garage queens read at your own risk! But I have/ have had lots of projects:
My other Mustang is a 1984 SVO I've owned since 2007 (and have had 2 other SVOs as well). This one has a 2.5L stroker, big turbo, header 3" exhaust etc etc etc with all sorts of suspension goodies thrown in. This was my autocross car for a good while, but I went a little too hard on the race car thing so while it's a hoot on a track it's pretty awful around town.
64 Comet Cyclone (shamefully I've owned it since I was 14 and it's been sitting in my grandparent's barn the entire time). Just pulled it out of storage. My dad and I are thinking about turning it into an East African Safari tribute car.
In the past I've had:
A 1969 Scout 800A:
A 1984 Ford EXP GT4 Race car:
A 1966 Mustang I pulled out of a 25 year slumber under a tree and took on the Gambler 500:
A Toyota Prius I lifted, built skid plates for etc and took on the Gambler 500. If you had told me in high school the closest I'd come to automotive fame would be with a lifted Prius...
My brother's 1964 Galaxie. This was his car in high school, I also drove it in high school when my first SVO was out of commission. He moved around a bunch and it sat for about 10 years. Did a bunch of work to get it back on the road and we took it on the Gambler 500 2 years ago:
And a variety of other less notable projects over the years:
72 Wagoneer
77 Suzuki GS550
72 Honda CB100 street-tracker
1991 Jeep Cherokee mild pre-runner build
