[63gpman]

In the spirit of documenting of this car, I wanted to add my recent conversation with the original owner Dave.

He and his wife purchased the car in May of 1965 when he was 23 years old. This was the first car that they purchased new together. He ordered and purchased it from Olson Motors in Albert Lea, MN and said that he liked the color of the new Nassau Blue Corvettes so he had to have it on his Catalina. He remembers paying $40 extra for that option. He owned the car from 65 to 69 when he purchased a 69 GTO 4spd. He sold the Catalina to a friend for $1400 at that time. He drove the GTO for a few years and sold it off as he figured he would end up killing himself in it!! (His words) He ended up buying the Catalina back from his friend a few years later and at that time the car was taken apart to redo the body. He got it back, had the motor gone through, heads redone, put it back together and drove it for a few years and sold it back to the same friend he sold it to earlier for $1650 this time! Several years later he got the car back again and did not do anything with it other than drive it here and there. He had picked up parts along the way, NOS and used with intentions of doing a restoration on the car. He got into street rods and now owns an early 30‘s rod that he has stuck a ton of money into. He did not want to spend the money on the Catalina so he sold it to Bill, the guy I purchased the car from, as it was stored there and he did not have the time or money to stick into the car.

I plan to have a meeting with Dave to learn more about the car, some more details on dates that he purchased and sold it and he does have some of the original paperwork for the car along with some manuals and he might have some parts also that he said I can have.

We did not go much into some details that I wanted to learn, but was very enjoyable to speak with Dave about the car and to learn some history about it. Obviously it has been around the block, but he did confirm, as he states, should have under 70k miles on it. I do believe this but also understand why the car has some of the issues that it had.

A few things, what questions would you ask the original owner of your car? Anything that I should try to find from him about the car?

As far as progress, I have the rear end buttoned up and am about to paint it tonight. I will have to test fit the control arms on it and drill the holes for the sway bar to make sure it does not bind and is in the correct position on the car. (any help on location of the bar would be great).