To start, a little backstory.  I grew up in a Canadian prairie city called Calgary.  While it's the biggest place between Vancouver and Toronto, even 20 years ago it wasn't quite big enough to attract much other than the big three and Japanese manufacturers.  Things have changed a lot since then; a boom in oil during the 2000's and some good years in the 2010s brought a lot of people and wealth to the area.  The sole BMW dealership in the whole city back then is now the Aston Martin, something I'd never have any exposure to as a kid.  Something else that happened during these years was good fast internet.  Somewhere along the way all sorts of good quality car content was widely available online; people could turn out a living reporting on car stories they cared about without having to print and distribute magazines and selling a lot of ads.

Fast forward to about 18mo ago, I was bored and looking around for an Alfa GTV project.  Probably can blame Petrolicious for the interest in that car (I definitely have a diverse top 10 though) and had been looking quite casually on and off for a couple years.  On the Alfa forums I stumbled in to an estate sale for a whole bunch of cars in the Vancouver area - an easy day's drive and no import complications.  I also recognized the place from a pair of Zagato project cars that sold via Bringatrailer.  I hummed and hawed about the GTV they had for probably a month, doing a lot of research, but decided it was too far past my ability to save.  This was for-sure the right decision after seeing it in person.

But in the back of one of the photos was a 2002 that looked pretty good; complete at least and came with a hoard of spares (and horrors).  A deal was made and I picked it up as soon as the roads were bare in spring of 2019.  Last year was mainly for finishing up a long-running 1985 Celica Supra restomod project, and strangely, by the end of the year I found myself working temporarily at a project back in Vancouver.  

As such, really all I've done is taking out a fair amount of the interior for cleaning (we'll get to the eww part soon), cleaning out the trunk and taking inventory of all the stuff it came with.  The trunk was full of who-knows, the interior is moldy and clearly had some animals living in it at some point.  Seriously gross.

One final point - people often say it'd be easier to find a better car.  But those people are likely in places where you'll easily find something.  If I were to go get something out of California or the desert it'd be a week long adventure.  All the hotels, food, gas, import duties, exchange rate etc. really add up. Something like this bought for a pittance is pretty low risk

As found via the Alfa forum

Rogers Pass on the way home

Actual lichen covering the windshield after a long car wash in the spring.  Comes off with glass cleaner and a lot of elbow grease.  The trim had full-blown moss in every crevise but that went away in the car wash mostly. 

I tried hand-held sandpaper on one side of the hood to see if the "texture" of the paint was from organics or just crappy paint.  Verdict is still out on that.  It's a weird dark-blue straight painted over Colorado Orange.  It will be Colorado Orange again when I'm done.

I'll spare everyone the horrors of the interior and trunk.  Mostly I was in full PPE and a mask cleaning it out slowly and splitting the hoard of "misc" between stuff to keep and stuff to throw away.  Lots of mold, lots of cardboard that had degraded in to nothing, spilled containers of who-knows-what, animal droppings & nests (2 mouse, 2 squirrel) and this gnarly spider corpse.  I physically pulled the seats and scrubbed them in the yard, hosed off in the garden.  Sprayed down everything leftover with Hydrogen Peroxide.  

Lastly here it is tucked in storage above the 85' Celica Supra that came back from paint.  I'd started in to the very worst rust at that point while the nice car was away.  A post topic for next time...