The car was sold to me as a “rolling restoration”, i.e. fully drivable but needing work to bring it back to pristine condition.
Sylvia (the car) had been well taken care of mechanically and has a documented history going back over 20 years, but the interior had started coming undone and rust had reared it’s ugly head at a few spots on the body.
I found a guy who did wonders with the interior, basically disassembling both front seats and re-sewing them with new reinforcing tape, using the original holes. He’s currently re-covering two steering wheels for me, when done they’ll be better than brand new.
The remaining issue is the paint. To be frank, the paint was showing it’s age when I bought it, and while a good wash and polish with Autoglym helped a lot, 2 years on there isn’t a whole lot more that can be done to bring out any kind of shine. More importantly to me, especially living in a wet winter climate, is the rust areas that have grown significantly since I bought it. She’s parked in an indoor heated garage, I can only imagine what would have happened parked out on the street… Lastly, the BPO (before previous owner) had an engine fire (carb backfired and spit up gasoline that ignited under the hood, luckily nothing serious was damaged), and the hood (bonnet) repaint really didn’t match the rest of the car. It had also started showing cracks (probably wrong kind of paint on top of another type).
The only way to properly deal with these issues is to strip the car down completely to the bare metal, cut out the rust and replace with new, clean steel, straighten all panels, prime and paint. Luckily there happens to be a place that specializes in this kind of work and has already done 4 other Quattroporte IIIs, meaning they know all the ins and outs and details and what to expect (and what not to break, because it can’t be replaced!).
So this past Easter I drove the car down to said shop, had a very nice chat with the owner and went through the entire car, and am now practicing patience as best I can. The first pictures of the work arrived today, I thought I’d share some of them here.
