Keith926
Member
I'm not in the Fuselage club anymore, I sold my 72 Newport a couple weeks ago. I have lots of vehicles, the Newport was one of four that are on the road, and have another 6 plus for future projects, an 85 K2500, 80 W200, 88 W150, 77 LeBaron, 67 Imperial Crown, 79 F250. The Newport always got the most attention over my 77 Delta 88, 1980 Buick Electra Park Avenue and cammed up 2002 Silverado. I suppose it was because it was a less common sight. I really thought that it would be an easy quick sale for at least $4000. I bought the car for 1100 around 2017, it ran off an external gas tank and had been off the road since 1982, I renewed all the brakes, brake and fuel lines, etc to get it rolling, then replaced the suspension, bought the Rare Parts ball joints and pitman arm, got every thing else locally or Rock Auto, new control arm bushings and shocks too, I didn't know how bad the lower control arm bushings can be on these cars until I got into it, I had got all the bushings but that day I didn't intend to change them but changing the ball joints and shocks I had to unload the torsion bar to change the front shocks and noticed how bad the control arm bushing was and realized it was the time to do it. The Newport didn't have uniform paint and the dark gold colour was called brown by most, brown isn't a commonly loved colour, most people noticed the flaws that were most visible from the removed vinyl top, apparently removed before it went into storage in '82, the right rear quarter and driver's front fender were painted brown from a failed colour match attempt on an old collision repair, I can't fault them because my colour match attempt ended up a gloss olive drab, applied with a brush. I've pictured a car like the Newport painted orange or lime green, maybe with gloss or satin black accents like a muscle car, but I've never painted an old car that loud for the road, the new owner of the Newport says he wants to paint it gloss black with a white roof, which kinda made me cringe, he can do what he wants with his car but black and white makes me think cop car and that is a Dodge or Plymouth thing, not Chrysler. Despite all the Newport's different shades of paint, when I think of it I don't see the imperfections as flaws and the one by two foot rectangle of the original dark gold paint that still shined like new was reason enough to not paint it. I guess it was ugly enough that someone may think it wasn't a good car, but it was the most solid and nicest unibody of any Fuselage car I have worked on, and had the most renewed running gear as well, but only brought $2500
