Fab Friday

What the Camaro looked like before it went all Frankenstein's Monster

I think I might have gotten a little carried away with yesterday's post.  Sad part is I cut it down and left out several details in an effort to make it more blog suitable.  Whoops.

So in an effort to not make any one's brain melt today, I'll try to keep it short. Annnnnnd click "publish."  Ha!  Lame joke, but I couldn't resist.  I'm feeling especially Monty Python-ish today; maybe it's all the John Cleese commercials I see during evening Olympic coverage.

Today's a great day for me.  A personal project of mine is entering the final stages of completion, and after almost 7 years I'll finally have an outcome.  It's a car--yes, I know it's not the typical project for a chick but I think I've established by now I'm far from normal... bordering on insane.  I'm okay with that.  More importantly, it's a 1969 Camaro.  I started out with a 15 year old's dream to turn one into something amazing--looking classically restored on the outside, and a modern monster under the shell.  I'd like to think I was able to somewhat stick to that dream, but the monster side may have been more prominent than I originally intended.  The roll cage, 12 gauges, multiple switches, and 5 point harnesses fitted to stock seats will give it away to someone who knows cars, but oh well.  I'll just have to do my best to act like an F1 team and prevent people from looking/photographing under the body or hood to hide the rest.

Everyone has one of those projects, either personally or professionally, that starts off simply enough and then before you know it, it's barely recognizable as the original idea.  This one is mine.  Looking back over it objectively, it would have been a LOT smarter and cost effective to buy a crate motor, drop it in, and be done with it.  But I held on to my idea of having something unique a little too hard.  If this were a business project, the NPV, IRR, and whatever other financial tool one can think of to evaluate the worth of a project would have been dripping with red ink.  I probably would have shut it down, redirected it, or put it aside to revisit later had it been business.  But emotions got the best of me.

Of course I can say all this because it's not 100% complete and I haven't driven it yet.  I'll probably change my mind once I crank the engine for the first time sitting in the driver's seat.  I've sunk more money into this car than I care to admit, my dad has advanced birthday and Christmas presents for me well into the 22nd century, and at least 5 different shops have had their hands in it.  I'm eternally grateful for their help because without them, it'd be at least another 7 years in the making.  Probably several more.  Time and money are precious commodities, and I couldn't be more humbled that so many have shared theirs to help make this absolutely ridiculous dream a reality.

Today, it rolls out of the last performance shop under its own power and heads to the body shop for paint, glass, and seals.  I'll need a pre-flight checklist to go through every time I start it, but there really will be nothing else like it on the road. 

Every once in a while, one of those ideas that shouldn't happen because it doesn't make sense does happen.  And the end result can force even the biggest skeptics to take a step back and wonder if maybe they should try something crazy, too.