It all started when I was 16 years old and I bought my first car... It was a 1969 17m RS 2-door coupé.

I started to renovate the 17m RS and fitted a slightly modified 2.3L v6 in it. I drove it for a couple of years, I drove it hard I should say! I also participated in some illegal street racing in it so it had its fair share of drama hehehe.

Anyway, years gone by and the memories of that car came back to haunt me, so the quest to find another one started. I wanted a candidate to do a renovation on, and found one at the end.

Sadly the man who was going to sell it to me did not play me straight and fooled me on that car. I was a little down for a while but, luckily, I stumbled on a new Taunus. A 1966 P5 20m TS 2-door sedan. My brother and I hooked a trailer onto our daily driver and set off to view it.

A couple of hours later, the P5 20m TS was loaded onto the trailer and on it´s way home to me.

Back home, we started assessing the P5 and unfortunately the further we delved the more rust we found. With the 20m being too far gone, I decided to look for a donor car.

A while later, this car showed up on a Facebook site... I bought it directly, without looking were it was located. Hmm, a foolish mistake! I drove 1200km in one day just to collect it and get it home. I can tell you, I won't do that again in a hurry. Hahaha.

My brother almost had to pry me out of the car at the end, I drove it mostly non-stop!

Luckily the replacement body shell saved me a couple of months worth of welding, although it had also suffered its fair share of bad repairs.

These patch "repairs" were found all around the body shell. We cut them out and replaced them with fresh, better welded, steel.

A couple of months worth of grinding and welding followed, and then it was time for paint.

The day I sent it for paint, I was very happy.

I had reached a milestone in the restoration. I didn t give my painter friend any time limit on the job, I said "take your time and make it the best you can".

Man, oh man, did he exceed my expectations on the paint!

This was the first time I saw the car all in one colour, the first coat of epoxi-primer had just been sprayed.

We oversprayed the epoxi-primer in black so that we would get a contract colour when we started to sand the body smooth. The contrasting colour helps identify high and low spots in the body which can then be worked to make the panels perfect.

I can´t express the feelings I had when I opened my email inbox and found this picture of my car. It was pure happines, I can tell you. I was excited on seeing the photo I jumped into my car and drove to the painter workshop just to see it in the flesh.

You clearly see the benefit of all the sanding and bodywork in the final paint. The car is very straight and true and it shows.

While the car was with the painter, I dismantled the running gear and spent time cleaning and painting them. I also changed things like the suspension bushes for new ones. It took some years to locate all of the parts, but now the running gear is as close to new as I can get it.

When locating new parts I had to take things slowly, so that neither my wallet nor my girlfriend would kick me to the door. Ha ha. It costs a great deal of money to do these kind of renovations, but if you spread the expenses out over a longer period of time it doesn't hurt your wallet that hard.

Just make sure to spread the parts around, as no-one wants their girlfriend finding a large pile of new parts in one go!

I took every little bit and piece of the car I could find apart and refurbished it before I packed them in boxes and on shelves waiting for the final build to start.

I finally got the car home. Sadly I only have a cold shed for storing my car in, so during these long Swedish winter months there is not a lot of activity on the car. I try to the fix and restore the smaller things at my work, but it isn´t easy.

So, the story continues... If you want you can follow it on my Facebook page.