Bluebird 88 · The Restoration

How a 1960
Oldsmobile found
its way home.

One day, a guy at work was talking about the CFO of the company wanting to sell his son's old car. For some reason, this caught my attention so I caught the CFO in the hallway and asked him about it. He told me it was a 60 Olds, but I had no idea what a 60 Olds looked like. He described it more and finally said "convertible". I thought to myself, "Any convertible is cool, as I should take a look".

We agreed to meet at his house after work. I remember the first time I saw it, it looked pretty rough. But it also seemed to have most of the parts. He told me, "It ran when it was parked". I've never done a car restoration, but always wanted to. I figured it would be like building a plastic model: take it apart, strip each part down, paint each part, put it back together. I paid him the $1,000 asking price and had it towed to my house.

I didn't waste any time getting started. I jumped right into it, starting at the front, taking parts off. I had a small compressor and tried sandblasting the parts, but in the Florida humidity the sand got clogged up immediately.