I wasn’t sure whether to continue my initial thread or start anew, so here we are…
Today, I finally had time to go pick up my Europa barn find in the driving rain. I tried like hell to talk myself out of it (especially when we arrived and I looked the car over again), but I’ve always been haunted by the thought of “If I don’t save it, who will?” Thus, my long history of financially suicidal east coast projects.
On the plus side, the car is very original and very complete. Its history is cloudy, but I believe it has had just two owners. It’s showing 24,000 miles, which I would guess is about right. It was last registered in Pennsylvania in 1983. Probably the brightest point - it is a real John Player Special. As I suspected, the badge was lying on the passenger side floor - Car #54. I’ll put a picture below. Also, the windshield is good. I’m told that’s important, so there’s that. The car has a set of minilites on it that I’ve never seen before. Two (or maybe three) of them are salvageable. The fourth one is toast. The original spare is in the luggage compartment and appears to have never been on the ground.
On the minus side, everyone associated with this car is dead. I bought it from (I hope I get this right) a nephew of the owner’s wife’s sister. He is liquidating a bunch of things, as his aunt preparing to move into an assisted living facility. The car has been sitting at her home for 40 years. Of course, the title is long gone. Pennsylvania is notoriously bad for trying to title a vehicle like this with no documentation. I think I can get it done, but it’ll be a process.
When the car was moved from the carport back to the garage, it was done improperly, by cavemen. The rear crossmember that holds the back of the gearbox is bent out of whack, and the front control arm on the driver’s side is pulled out of its mounting point (with most of the mounting point still attached). I’m not bothered by any of that because the car will need a chassis…badly. In fact, it will need just about everything. There are mice nests everywhere and the interior smells amazing. I’ll get to those next week. Today, I hit the exterior with the power washer and called it good.
For now, I think that’s it. I have to finish my current project before I can get into this one, so probably a year or so. In the meantime, if any of you would really like to own a full-on project John Player Special, I would probably be willing to sell it, be happy to have saved it from a tragic end, and continue to look for my dream S2. If nobody wants it, I’ll go ahead and build it myself.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading and enjoy the pics
