So the history of this car and what happened to it…
When I bought the car it came with a NY transferable registration from the 90’s. Giving me the owner before Ralph. I was able to find the guy on FB even though I don’t have it. My wife messaged him and he gave me a call weeks later. He didn’t seem too pleased to hear the car still existed, and gave me almost no info other than he bought it out of Queens NYC in the late 80’s and never drove the car. He sold it in 2008ish and it sat outside in his yard until he sold it. When he bought it the car barely ran and didn’t run soon after.
My trail went cold there, then, months later I decided to take the rear window regulators out to free them up. Inside the drivers side quarter window slot I found a For Sale sign with a phone number. Googling the number I eventually tracked down a disconnected phone number to Astoria Queens. Bingo.
Further digging revealed 2 boys who grew up with that phone number. So I start calling numbers for the people listed. Eventually getting a woman whose husband was the guy I was looking for, named Brian.
Brian was very helpful. He bought the car in 1985 when he turned 16 and learned how to drive stick in the car on the way home from picking it up. He sold it in 87-88 getting ready to head for college. He also gave me the name of the guy he bought it from, who mini tubbed it in a backyard on Long Island. Brian also confirmed my suspicions that even though the car currently has a quasi A scheme paint job, this was built new as the rarer, though less outrageous, B scheme paint job. One of only 297 built.
Eventually I was able to get a hold of Bob Gianelli, the gentleman who had done all of the bodywork to the car back in the 1970’s. He started a business called “Narrow It” and mini tubbed cars. This was one of his first ones and his wife liked the car so he owned it for quite awhile. He told me about 1973 he bought it. But having owned close to 400 cars in his life he had no other info about where he bought it from. But according to him he bought mostly local cars. So I believe this car spent most of its life in NYC/Long Island.
Brian was kind enough to send me photos of when he owned the car. The photos are from him getting ready to go to a car show at the now torn down NYC coliseum.
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