Hi all! It's been far too long since I had a notable update for this build. 

Long story short... I was living in Socal for the past three years. About a year ago I planned to bring the 02 to socal after having a friend do the rust repair. Due to some unfortunate circumstances he wasn't able to work on the car for about the half of a year it was with him. I began planning to ship the car over anyway, and the day before the delivery was planned my girlfriend expressed her desire to move back to the East coast. I figured, sure, why not, CA is nice but far too expensive. I redirected the delivery to a friend's place in New Jersey for storage. Fast forward a few months and now I am living in Central NJ. For the first time in my life I have my own garage and a place to work on the car. It's been in my hands for about a week now and I've slowly began to dissasemble, document, and formulate a plan. 

The rust is in all the usual places, but thankfully I've caught it before the point of no return. It will need a lot of work and I plan to completely gut the vehicle in order to completely erradicate the rust. Although I have driven the car in the past, it will be down for a while until I get all of the rust and bodywork sorted. My plans haven't been decided yet - it's very original in many ways and I have reason to believe the milage is very very low... As in the 29,000 miles on the odo might be correct. 

Here are some pictures and some findings. Most notable finds include the following:

- Original spare tire in excellent shape, a radial too! 

- condition of the trunk: all side panels are present and the tail light covers are not broken at all.

- a load of faded nudie pics under the rear seat 

- a hamburg city map from 1990-1991 stuffed in the rear door card, which validates the previous owners story that he bought the car in hamburg in the early 90s and drove it to Italy prior to exporting it to the US

- Blaupunkt stereo is likely original 

- I'm very certain I have the original plate for the car, so long as oval plates were still in use in 1974

- "how to import your car into the us": guide from the early 1990s

-Extreme irony in the form of the passenger rocker patch panel being made from a sign that reads "free consultation" 

I will post updates as they come.