1956 karmann ghia

This is a project I traded some rare bus parts for,it hurt to give some of the

things up but this is a car for my wife.  My wife isn't a car buff or anything like

that,in fact she cares very little of old cars.  I got wind from a friend of hers

that she had mentioned she would love to have a "nice" karmann ghia.  Truth

be told she wouldnt know the difference between a 56 or a 73 ghia,but im

 building it and there was no way i was going to spend "real" money on

anything but a "lowlight" 55-59 ghia.

      Here's the car as it came to me,dismantled and primed 2 owners ago.

  This is a sad but fairly common issue with classic car "restorations". A fella

gets a nice clean complete car and dismantles it thinking he/she will have the

money/time/skills to restore it only to come to a realization that they none of

 these elements. Please folks dont take a car apart if you cant finish what

 you start,just leave it alone,you will end up doing more harm than good. One

 of the worst things that happens is parts get lost. Thankfully we have such an early car

here that almost everything is oval era beetle. 

     Beautiful rustfree basis for restoration,these cars are ussually wrecked

 and rusty as hell,were well ahead of the game in that department.

    I plan on having the car in paint (no not the original color,or a offered

from the factory color for that matter) by spring. We have several other

 projects we are juggling so the "no bodywork" option on this car is a great

plus.  At this point were thinking of a deep maroon or a deep brown for the

 color.  Im also toying with the idea of doing the interior in a non-original

 color,but follow the original layout.  Im going to go with the

theme/philosophy of "this what it would've looked like had ghia offered

these colors".  I am told that ghias were only different nonstock colors for

very special customers or dignitaries,well I do refer to my wife as "The

 Queen" so  it's quite fitting.

Okay so I had some friends over (yeah I do actually have friends) and tricked them into thinking it would

be fun to seperate the body from the pan/chassis on my wifes rig.

Granted a little messy but I saved alot of time by having my buddies here to help manually remove the body,next up

chassis refurbish and body/paintwork. Im only trying to get the paintwork done by summers end,anything else is too ambitious

with my workload.

    The pan was in pretty decent shape and was just repaired instead of full replacement.

    Next the front end rebuilt,using the factory tools really helps insure you have right geometry.

Stubborn drums get no mercy with this tool

  Finally got the body properly prepped,after removing all the primer from the previous repairs

 it was found that the poor thing had been hit on all sides. Even a rear quarter replaced then wrecked

again,so much for the "rustfree/wreckfree" 56 ghia I traded for!

      Started painting too,we chose correct colors after all. Lizard green/Dark green,i kinda like the colors.

It might be interesting to note that my wife still hasnt really laid eyes on the car at all.