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Barstow Ca. 1968
My father had taken up work at a plant called Western Talc in this high desert area of California right smack in the middle of nowhere between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He had his '66 911 by then but was always passively on the lookout for a 356. During one of his trips into Barstow he passed by an automobile Towing/wrecking yard called Lloyds Auto which was located on the outskirts of town just East of the old train station. He remembers first seeing the car from the road behind their chain-link fence just to the side of the front gate. My old friend and fabricating mentor Greg Parker a 40 year resident there also remembers seeing it by the front gate. Greg told me it sat there for quite a while; several months at least. My Father described looking at it for the first time; the 4-cam motor and transmission were gone by then and the rear of the car was set up on cinderblocks. He had no idea what a Carrera was but thought the emblems on the front fenders were sorta cool. He immediately went over to the office to see if it was for sale. He had caught its owner Lloyed Glenn at just the right moment I guess. Lloyed must have made his money on the sale of the engine and had his fill of the car after a failed attempt to install a Corvair drivetrain in it at some point afterward. During their brief conversation my dad asked how much he'd take for it? He said Lloyed sort of shook his head, exhaled deeply and replied "give me 75.00 bucks and get it out of here." My father always jokingly said he was reaching for his wallet before he finished that sentence.
The Story of how ole' Lloyed came to own this car is a bit sketchy but my father remembers hearing that the owner was from L.A. and was either on his way to Las Vegas or on his way back home when its motor began running hot, leaving him stranded just outside of Barstow. Lloyed towed it in and weather it was sold to him for the tow bill or just completely left abandoned is unknown. Sometime after taking possession its original 4-cam motor was pulled and sold to the owner of a local steak house called the Idle Spurs. It was installed into his Manx dune buggy with very poor and temperamental results. A Los Angeles VW performance shop owned by Andre Weir and Al Cadrobbi called A&A trans. was contacted for help. They told him "you don't want unreliable 4-cam in there, we'll set you up with a solid 1600VW motor in trade".
He was soon snookered out of it. That story was relayed to me by Greg who ran in the same group of off-roaders at the time.
Here she is shortly after my father got her home and Mounted up on wood planks under the patio of the house he and his father were renting at the time. Just rough old abused car with a cheap and faded "door-slammer" British racing green paint job with spots of primer. You can see the original silver paint on the underside of the trunk lid here. Car was being prepped for the type 1 VW swing-axle and 40 horse motor he had purchased for it.
Still in the same spot under the patio. VW transmission looks like its mounted and the new VW motor is ready to go in next. That's my grandfather messing about in the engine compartment and my mother is sitting in the drivers seat.
It Runs! Its pictured here at the Talc plant parking lot next to some sort of large storage container. This was his daily driver to work...
A road trip up to San Diego. Thats my mother; I think just 24 there and just dating my dad at the time. My mother was living in San Diego and my dad would drive up on weekends to see her. Checkout all the Brand new 911's on the lot for 1969!
My father's memory is fading so he can't explain this picture. It actually had a 356 engine in it at some point. It must have been a loaner because there were no signs of it anywhere growing up. Look at the Vice-grip on the reverse light. I had victor Miles restore it so its days as a tool caddy are over!!! Like many early 356's this one too was retro-fitted with teardrop tail lights. Fortunately who ever did this was very conservative and cut-out only what was necessary. The original Beehive mount holes were still there for correct replacement.
Update: 7/14 Old receipt found!
Dated Feb. 25, 1970 for a 912 engine out of Long Beach CA. for 395.00.(way more than my dad paid for the car!) Balance was due March 12, 1970. This has to be the motor pictured in the car above. Was very happy to find this.
Shit!!
This happened while it was parked. My father would car pool some days to work. It was sitting on the street in front of his co-workers house which also happened to be at the base of a hill. A single mother with six kids parked her station wagon up this hill and forgot to set the parking brake. It soon rolled down the hill and nailed the right fender cue-balling this poor out matched car into the middle of the street. When My father arrived the the lady was very sorry and apoligetic. He soon learned she was uninsured and was just getting by in life. So he felt bad for her and didn't persue the matter. I've been told it was actually more smashed in before this shot was taken. Fortunately this did not get into the chassis. I've looked it over several times for any deformation. He pulled this fender out by secruring the car to a tree ; put two eye bolts in the fender with big washers(holes next to the headlight opening) hooked a chain to them and yanked it out several times with an old ford tractor we still have. "shadetree time"
Update: 7/14 Also ran across these three old estimates from area body shops to repair this damage. I asked my dad about this again and he said that his intention was always to fix it himself but apparently the lady did offer to pay for the damages provided he get three estimates; so that's what he did. He showed them to her and she did give him what she could spare which was 160.00. She told him to come back next month for the balance. He went back the following month and she said she didn't have it and to come back on the first of the next month. He again went back and she said Look I'm really sorry but I just don't have it to spare; you can have one of my kids instead... This is when he dropped the matter all together. So he did at least get 160 bucks from her.
This one is the most water damaged but is the most important one to me and I'm so happy to have found it before it was entirely too late. Its dated 11/69. Its from A1 Body shop right before it became Towing & garage. The signature on the bottom reads: "Greg". This estimate was performed by my great late friend and mentor! He was an early 20-something kid and just back from his tour in Vietnam when this was filled out. So interesting how life can move in small circles. Greg needed 387.05 to take on this job. labor was 288.25 and parts where only 88.24!
Dated 8/29/69 Sherwood needed 398.78
The last one dated 9/11/69 was the cheapest at 311.50
Talking with my dad about these got us speculating on what kind of repairs these would have been?? All the estimates stated "replace fender" If that would have been the case it most certainly would have been the famous double-skinned-brazed on replacement fender that where the norm of the day. So glad my father was too cheap to have them do it. 
For not being a body man at the time with only improvised tools and techniques he got it pretty close! That's my little old grandfather again; been gone since '77.
Went as far as he could on metalwork I guess. Its now coated with either bondo or primer here, can't really tell. After looking at these old shots one very fortunate thing did happen; that wagon missed that nerf-bar! Things would have been so much worse had that been driven back as well! The battery box would have been twisted etc. etc. I hate to even think about what might have been...
Headlight bucket back in and ready for another fight!! What a poor old bruiser this car has been.. I think that chunk of bondo under the hood lip fell out from the impact on the fender...
taken after the right fender was crunched and pulled out in probably early 1970. Photo was shot on a frontage road just outside Barstow CA. just off of route '66. The VW motor in it here would soon give up and the car would sit in our yard once again for another 9 years. I think back to playing and nosing around in this car during that time and remember being very annoyed when that grey primer would coat my hands or clothes on contact with it. This didn't stop me though nor did the black-widow spiders I was constantly being warned about. The car always had several but they were found in the trunk, engine compartment and around the suspension and inside the brake drums. Luckily I never ran across one in the interior, luckily! I loved mousing through this car as a kid. It doubled as my dad's office file storage so there was a lot to nose through. I remember there being all these manila envelopes and boxes of paperwork along with dark brown storage bottles from the Lab he worked in. The glove-compartment was of most interest after finding my dads pipe and a stale old bag of captain black tobacco. I also remember running across the "Carrera" fender emblems in there which is where they were always stored since the car was never nice enough to mount back on. Funny the things you remember as a little kid.
Oh yes, The summer of '79.
The summer of love; for me! I was 8 and this is when I fell in love with this car. My dad bought another 40HP VW motor to get her up and running again. I remember going with my dad to buy the engine. I remember this car with its tail end way up in the air in the middle of my dads workshop. I spent all my free time watching and poking around the car. I can remember even then thinking it was very similar to our '66 911 daily driver but much smaller and more primitive even though I didn't have a word to describe it then. My dad was an extremely slow worker (probably where I get it from)and being a little kid with no patience made the anticipation of going for a ride very painful! I'm sure I drove him nuts asking "when was it going to be done" every five minutes. It finally did happen though! I don't remember it being powerful or super fast just really small and loud. (stinger pipe with no muffler) I thought it was the coolest car ever! I can still remember several trips in it. Shortly after my dad stripped it to bare metal; the crank broke coincidently on the way home from Las Vegas after dropping my mother off at the airport. He did manage to limp it back home under its own power though. Back to sitting idle in the yard it went and the body was left to rust over. Wish I would have taken a picture of that before I started cleaning the rust off in '87.
Here is a shot of me, my old pal Benjy and the car just off to the right. My memory of this time was very exciting and magical in a way. The old AM radio was on the entire time in my dads shop. To this day if I hear "the sultains of swing" by Dire straights," Reunited" by peaches&herb or "heart of Glass" by Blonde to name a few; I am transported right back there! The smell of old bad gasoline will take me there too!
Fast forward 8 years to 1987:
I was 16 years old at the time and finally worked up the nerve to ask my father if I could have this car or at least fix it up a little and drive it. Growing up my father prided himself on telling me no pretty much every time I asked for something like a toy or model so by this time I was very much conditioned to that response. My Dad had accumulated five Porsches by this time; 3 911's and two 356AT1 coupes. I remember weighing my choices before hand on which car I had the best chance of getting a yes on; even though I thought a yes was a longshot period. I decided on this one because first I liked it best since '79 and because it was the roughest with no Porsche engine. Little did either one of us suspect that it would eventually become the most valuable of the bunch.
These shots were taken during the summer of 1987. Unfortunately I did not think to take shots of it once pulled out from under the old chicken coop with the body completely covered in surface rust.
By this time we had about a week invested cleaning the body in sections using Muriatic acid. Its first base coat of DP40 was just about to be completed here.. Little did I know that I would be continuing this journey off and on for the next 25 years.
Getting back to my father, once I had worked up the nerve to ask him about the car ( I remember this huge wave of nervous energy welling up right after I said," hey dad, can I ask you something?
) I gave him my best sales pitch and in response he just sort of put on a serious face and said "let me think about". That was my dads standard response back then but at least it wasn't a "no" just yet.
Several days later he and I were on an errand to the hardware store and while we were pulling out of the parking lot he decided to give me his answer: "You can have the car to work on and drive "BUT" you cannot sell it. If you decide to change your mind you have to give it back to me and I'll buy you out for what you have put into it." It sounded more than fair to me so it was of course a deal! I'll have to ask him if he's still interested in buying it back..
These outer surfaces are of course the easy and fun part. The next order of business was to incorrectly patch repair both longitudinals and the battery box floor. All the while scraping old tar and treating surface rust in the wheel wells etc. A horribly slow and dirty process.
My father had taken up work at a plant called Western Talc in this high desert area of California right smack in the middle of nowhere between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He had his '66 911 by then but was always passively on the lookout for a 356. During one of his trips into Barstow he passed by an automobile Towing/wrecking yard called Lloyds Auto which was located on the outskirts of town just East of the old train station. He remembers first seeing the car from the road behind their chain-link fence just to the side of the front gate. My old friend and fabricating mentor Greg Parker a 40 year resident there also remembers seeing it by the front gate. Greg told me it sat there for quite a while; several months at least. My Father described looking at it for the first time; the 4-cam motor and transmission were gone by then and the rear of the car was set up on cinderblocks. He had no idea what a Carrera was but thought the emblems on the front fenders were sorta cool. He immediately went over to the office to see if it was for sale. He had caught its owner Lloyed Glenn at just the right moment I guess. Lloyed must have made his money on the sale of the engine and had his fill of the car after a failed attempt to install a Corvair drivetrain in it at some point afterward. During their brief conversation my dad asked how much he'd take for it? He said Lloyed sort of shook his head, exhaled deeply and replied "give me 75.00 bucks and get it out of here." My father always jokingly said he was reaching for his wallet before he finished that sentence.
The Story of how ole' Lloyed came to own this car is a bit sketchy but my father remembers hearing that the owner was from L.A. and was either on his way to Las Vegas or on his way back home when its motor began running hot, leaving him stranded just outside of Barstow. Lloyed towed it in and weather it was sold to him for the tow bill or just completely left abandoned is unknown. Sometime after taking possession its original 4-cam motor was pulled and sold to the owner of a local steak house called the Idle Spurs. It was installed into his Manx dune buggy with very poor and temperamental results. A Los Angeles VW performance shop owned by Andre Weir and Al Cadrobbi called A&A trans. was contacted for help. They told him "you don't want unreliable 4-cam in there, we'll set you up with a solid 1600VW motor in trade".
He was soon snookered out of it. That story was relayed to me by Greg who ran in the same group of off-roaders at the time. Here she is shortly after my father got her home and Mounted up on wood planks under the patio of the house he and his father were renting at the time. Just rough old abused car with a cheap and faded "door-slammer" British racing green paint job with spots of primer. You can see the original silver paint on the underside of the trunk lid here. Car was being prepped for the type 1 VW swing-axle and 40 horse motor he had purchased for it.
Still in the same spot under the patio. VW transmission looks like its mounted and the new VW motor is ready to go in next. That's my grandfather messing about in the engine compartment and my mother is sitting in the drivers seat.
It Runs! Its pictured here at the Talc plant parking lot next to some sort of large storage container. This was his daily driver to work...
A road trip up to San Diego. Thats my mother; I think just 24 there and just dating my dad at the time. My mother was living in San Diego and my dad would drive up on weekends to see her. Checkout all the Brand new 911's on the lot for 1969!
My father's memory is fading so he can't explain this picture. It actually had a 356 engine in it at some point. It must have been a loaner because there were no signs of it anywhere growing up. Look at the Vice-grip on the reverse light. I had victor Miles restore it so its days as a tool caddy are over!!! Like many early 356's this one too was retro-fitted with teardrop tail lights. Fortunately who ever did this was very conservative and cut-out only what was necessary. The original Beehive mount holes were still there for correct replacement.
Update: 7/14 Old receipt found!
Dated Feb. 25, 1970 for a 912 engine out of Long Beach CA. for 395.00.(way more than my dad paid for the car!) Balance was due March 12, 1970. This has to be the motor pictured in the car above. Was very happy to find this.Shit!!
This happened while it was parked. My father would car pool some days to work. It was sitting on the street in front of his co-workers house which also happened to be at the base of a hill. A single mother with six kids parked her station wagon up this hill and forgot to set the parking brake. It soon rolled down the hill and nailed the right fender cue-balling this poor out matched car into the middle of the street. When My father arrived the the lady was very sorry and apoligetic. He soon learned she was uninsured and was just getting by in life. So he felt bad for her and didn't persue the matter. I've been told it was actually more smashed in before this shot was taken. Fortunately this did not get into the chassis. I've looked it over several times for any deformation. He pulled this fender out by secruring the car to a tree ; put two eye bolts in the fender with big washers(holes next to the headlight opening) hooked a chain to them and yanked it out several times with an old ford tractor we still have. "shadetree time"Update: 7/14 Also ran across these three old estimates from area body shops to repair this damage. I asked my dad about this again and he said that his intention was always to fix it himself but apparently the lady did offer to pay for the damages provided he get three estimates; so that's what he did. He showed them to her and she did give him what she could spare which was 160.00. She told him to come back next month for the balance. He went back the following month and she said she didn't have it and to come back on the first of the next month. He again went back and she said Look I'm really sorry but I just don't have it to spare; you can have one of my kids instead... This is when he dropped the matter all together. So he did at least get 160 bucks from her.
This one is the most water damaged but is the most important one to me and I'm so happy to have found it before it was entirely too late. Its dated 11/69. Its from A1 Body shop right before it became Towing & garage. The signature on the bottom reads: "Greg". This estimate was performed by my great late friend and mentor! He was an early 20-something kid and just back from his tour in Vietnam when this was filled out. So interesting how life can move in small circles. Greg needed 387.05 to take on this job. labor was 288.25 and parts where only 88.24!
Dated 8/29/69 Sherwood needed 398.78
The last one dated 9/11/69 was the cheapest at 311.50
Talking with my dad about these got us speculating on what kind of repairs these would have been?? All the estimates stated "replace fender" If that would have been the case it most certainly would have been the famous double-skinned-brazed on replacement fender that where the norm of the day.
So glad my father was too cheap to have them do it. For not being a body man at the time with only improvised tools and techniques he got it pretty close! That's my little old grandfather again; been gone since '77.
Went as far as he could on metalwork I guess. Its now coated with either bondo or primer here, can't really tell. After looking at these old shots one very fortunate thing did happen; that wagon missed that nerf-bar! Things would have been so much worse had that been driven back as well! The battery box would have been twisted etc. etc.
I hate to even think about what might have been...Headlight bucket back in and ready for another fight!! What a poor old bruiser this car has been.. I think that chunk of bondo under the hood lip fell out from the impact on the fender...
taken after the right fender was crunched and pulled out in probably early 1970. Photo was shot on a frontage road just outside Barstow CA. just off of route '66. The VW motor in it here would soon give up and the car would sit in our yard once again for another 9 years. I think back to playing and nosing around in this car during that time and remember being very annoyed when that grey primer would coat my hands or clothes on contact with it. This didn't stop me though nor did the black-widow spiders I was constantly being warned about. The car always had several but they were found in the trunk, engine compartment and around the suspension and inside the brake drums. Luckily I never ran across one in the interior, luckily! I loved mousing through this car as a kid. It doubled as my dad's office file storage so there was a lot to nose through.
I remember there being all these manila envelopes and boxes of paperwork along with dark brown storage bottles from the Lab he worked in. The glove-compartment was of most interest after finding my dads pipe and a stale old bag of captain black tobacco. I also remember running across the "Carrera" fender emblems in there which is where they were always stored since the car was never nice enough to mount back on. Funny the things you remember as a little kid.Oh yes, The summer of '79.
The summer of love; for me! I was 8 and this is when I fell in love with this car. My dad bought another 40HP VW motor to get her up and running again. I remember going with my dad to buy the engine. I remember this car with its tail end way up in the air in the middle of my dads workshop. I spent all my free time watching and poking around the car. I can remember even then thinking it was very similar to our '66 911 daily driver but much smaller and more primitive even though I didn't have a word to describe it then. My dad was an extremely slow worker (probably where I get it from)and being a little kid with no patience made the anticipation of going for a ride very painful! I'm sure I drove him nuts asking "when was it going to be done" every five minutes. It finally did happen though! I don't remember it being powerful or super fast just really small and loud. (stinger pipe with no muffler) I thought it was the coolest car ever! I can still remember several trips in it. Shortly after my dad stripped it to bare metal; the crank broke coincidently on the way home from Las Vegas after dropping my mother off at the airport. He did manage to limp it back home under its own power though. Back to sitting idle in the yard it went and the body was left to rust over. Wish I would have taken a picture of that before I started cleaning the rust off in '87. Here is a shot of me, my old pal Benjy and the car just off to the right. My memory of this time was very exciting and magical in a way. The old AM radio was on the entire time in my dads shop. To this day if I hear "the sultains of swing" by Dire straights," Reunited" by peaches&herb or "heart of Glass" by Blonde to name a few; I am transported right back there! The smell of old bad gasoline will take me there too!
Fast forward 8 years to 1987:
I was 16 years old at the time and finally worked up the nerve to ask my father if I could have this car or at least fix it up a little and drive it. Growing up my father prided himself on telling me no pretty much every time I asked for something like a toy or model so by this time I was very much conditioned to that response. My Dad had accumulated five Porsches by this time; 3 911's and two 356AT1 coupes. I remember weighing my choices before hand on which car I had the best chance of getting a yes on; even though I thought a yes was a longshot period. I decided on this one because first I liked it best since '79 and because it was the roughest with no Porsche engine. Little did either one of us suspect that it would eventually become the most valuable of the bunch.
These shots were taken during the summer of 1987. Unfortunately I did not think to take shots of it once pulled out from under the old chicken coop with the body completely covered in surface rust.
By this time we had about a week invested cleaning the body in sections using Muriatic acid. Its first base coat of DP40 was just about to be completed here.. Little did I know that I would be continuing this journey off and on for the next 25 years. Getting back to my father, once I had worked up the nerve to ask him about the car ( I remember this huge wave of nervous energy welling up right after I said," hey dad, can I ask you something?
) I gave him my best sales pitch and in response he just sort of put on a serious face and said "let me think about". That was my dads standard response back then but at least it wasn't a "no" just yet.Several days later he and I were on an errand to the hardware store and while we were pulling out of the parking lot he decided to give me his answer: "You can have the car to work on and drive "BUT" you cannot sell it. If you decide to change your mind you have to give it back to me and I'll buy you out for what you have put into it." It sounded more than fair to me so it was of course a deal! I'll have to ask him if he's still interested in buying it back..
These outer surfaces are of course the easy and fun part. The next order of business was to incorrectly patch repair both longitudinals and the battery box floor. All the while scraping old tar and treating surface rust in the wheel wells etc. A horribly slow and dirty process.
Once I saw that I wasn't spending another second going about it the way I had been. We then set about prepping this car for the same procedure and by late spring '88 it was ready to go. 
(This is how I learned though) In preparation on getting it back on wheels we had also installed these C disc units.
There's my faithful restoration buddy Sammy once again in the background.
Steering column, gearshifter, door tops, JEEZ! I forgot about the MOMO wheel I had in there. I think at the time I was looking to put a pair of Honda Civic bucket seat in it. What can I tell you; this is all the silly stuff you think is cool when your a 19 year old kid. 
After about 4 years I moved it to Gregs shop and into that back room untouched and almost forgotten until '99 when I got back into it again.
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