In September, I was the lead car in a three-car stack-up. It scared my daughter, whom I was taking to school, and caused minor cracks in the chrome of the bumper. The insurance carrier for the Pontiac dealer's courtesy van that created the sandwich laid out $400 to have the rear bumper re-plated. (Incredibly, the Grand Am in the center had over $3000 in damages and the van over $1700.) I took the bumper to a shop that did sub-contracting work for my employer. He was happy to do the job for $150.
In the summer of '91, I did a valve job on the engine and put a clutch in the car. Total outlay for parts was $125 and $70 to the machine shop for the work on the cylinder heads. The cracked upholstery on the rear seat finally crossed the nuisance threshold, so I found a guy who had stitched seats for American Motors who would custom-make a set of seat covers in the original pattern. The seats needed three different "grains" of vinyl and $800 to make it into the car. It smelled like a new car for four months afterwards.
In April of '92, I got caught in a hail storm. The car picked up a few dings. I checked my insurance coverage and found that comprehensive had been written for the car. The adjuster came up with two pages of pings and dings the week afterwards. They said that the repair costs would be more than the car was worth. They offered me $2500 for the car to total it out or $2000 for the damages and I keep the car. I took the money and drove off in the Dart.
At the time I worked for a company that repaired airplanes and helicopers. I was talking with one of the guys in the shop who told me it would be worth a try to use a process they used to get hail dents out of wings. The next weekend, we took the car into the paint booth in the hanger and cranked the heat up. When we got the metal as hot as we could in the booth, I drove it out on the ramp where we hosed it down with cold water. It sounded like a popcorn popper. Magically most of the dents came out. Back into the hanger for heat lamps on the more stubborn dents. When these were heated, we dumped wet towels full of ice on them. More pinging and popping. There was one significant dent on the roof that wouldn't budge. I cut the headliner and tapped it out from the back side. No paint cracked from any of this nonsense. Call it $100 for replacing the headliner and another few dollars for my mechanic friend's lunch.
After this, I did some work documenting the relative rarity of this car (1 of 450) and the ownership history. I cleaned up the rust in the battery box and repainted it. I spent $10 for the paint and related supplies. I also replaced the bushings in the front end and the shift lever on the column. The work took about three days and about $200 for pressing the bushings in the control arms and re-aligning the front end.
In September of 1994 I decided to see if I could sell the car. I put an ad in the classic car section of the newspaper. There were just two callers. One came to look at the car and fell in love with it. For $3200, it became his.
I owned the car for over three years and made $1615 by my figures, not including value for my labor. It isn't often you can buy a car, drive it for three years, and come out ahead. It had never failed to get me where I was going.
The postscript to this story is that I used some of the proceeds to get another car. After having a number of other cars sold before I could arrive with the cash, I wound up with another '66 Dart. This one a GT hardtop. The story on this one is still in progress.