The Start

For reasons that I still do not understand I have decided to restore a 1963 Ford Galaxie 500. Most of the people that I have spoken to have all thrown up their hands in horror and begged me not to do it. Car restoration works like this. You buy a wreck, you spend years of your life and thousands of your dollars restoring it. Then you sell it for about half of what you spent on it.

Fortunately this will not be the case for me. You see the car is going to be a graduation present for Kimberley my eldest daughter. This not only gives me 3 years to complete the project but means that I start the restoration knowing that I am going to lose vast amounts of money and that should take away some of the financial disappointment. (Actually to be honest I plan to complete in two years and have fun myself for a year).

So why a 63 Galaxie? Well Kimberley has always loved that classic square American muscle car shape even when she was a preteen and we were living in England, I guess somethings were just meant to be.

Tonight I am going to look at a project car and hopefully it will soon be mine. I am particularly keen on this one as it has a 3 speed column shift (plus overdrive) and factory air (a rarity on a 63 Galaxie). Kimberley scorns auto transmission and as I am determined to keep the car pretty much stock, the air will make the car more drivable in these hot Virginia summers.

What will follow is lots of pictures and progress reports. I am hoping that in August 2009 I will be able to look back on this and say "Wow what a ride, let's do it all over again", we will see.