".....Sad because I wondered why so many of the subsequent owners did not care for it and respect it like they should have. Why they dismantled it, ran it into the ground, and how it went from the glory of a hotrod magazine cover, to losing it hood, interior, seat, steering wheel, engine, and ended up sitting in a garage for 12 years, looking like not much more than a rolling chassis......"

Cars go through a lot of different stages as they go through their life cycle(s)...especially cars that are destine to eventually become hot rods.

Normally they start out as mundane mass produced passenger cars and are worn out and discarded (usually after passing though numerous hands). Those that have managed to elude the crusher eventually reach an age where due to their age actually become desirable again (if they haven't been stripped to the point of being a parts car).

Each owner of the car usually adds a little personality to the car, be it in the form of modification or more scars.

In a lot of cases many first time hot rodders buy a car with their own vision of what it will eventually be......and in many cases will get a start on the car before admitting they are in over their heads either financially and or ability wise.

Almost every car I have built and sold over the years has eventually been further modified by follow on owners (just as I usually do when I buy a new project).

The 3rd owner of my 65 Biscayne after me bought it for the dual quad motor/4 speed and a few of the options I had on it for his 65 Impala 2dr hard top. The rolling chassis was sold to some other aspiring Hot Rodder.

My 37 Dodge pick-up (pending project) was a nice old stock pick-up until around 90 or so when it underwent an attempt at being turned into a ???(well I won't really say hot rod). It had a Mustang II style front suspension professionally installed and then the butchery began with a chopped up fire wall, a 2.8 V6,C3 and 4 bolt Mustang II rear end installed, then left outside with the front end sheetmetal in the bed until around 2003 when I came along. I went through mock-up with a Hemi and torqueflight, sold it to help step daughter pay for a custody battle for my grandson and eventually bought it back where I hopefully get back to putting it together next year.

The 57 Plymouth I'm just finishing up (should move under it's own power sometime this weekend for the first time in 30 years) had a repaint and quarter panel repair and aftermarket "Belvedere" some time when it was fairly new. At some point someone rebuilt the motor (flat head 6) and it didn't even warn enough to burn the overspray paint off the exhaust manifold before it threw a rod out the side of the block. It then went to a wrecking yard for a while was bought by someone intending on build a 426 wedge/crossram hot rod out of it.....was bought by my friend who had to take the car in a package deal to buy the crossrams for another project who sold it to me......on a side note he tried to buy it back from me to use as a parts cars for a rusty 57 rag top he latter picked up.

MY original plan was to built it as a nostalgia drag car, but that eventually changed direction and is now going to be my hiway cruiser/vacation car.

The old saying "the constant in life is change" also applies to a cars life.