This is something that I worked on when I was in high school. When I got this car it was in rough shape; the seats were torn up, the door panels were sheet metal that rattled, none of the electronics worked (no headlights, no horn, no wipers, unreliable starter), and there was about 10 miles of speaker wire wrapping back and forth in the cabin, no doubt from the most epic speaker system ever installed in a VW beetle. It had pretty cool rims though that I kept. It still isn't perfect, but I did a lot to turn this thing into something that could be driven reasonably comfortably.
It is also the car that I learned how to drive stick with. I'm actually pretty good at it now, and I think that's mostly because a 40 horsepower car from the mid-70s is just about the most difficult car to learn on.
From about 10 feet away it looked alright;
it looked a bit worse if you were any closer though
and the electrical situation was horrifying.
I spent about a year in total making this thing nice.
I fixed all of the electronics (none of which worked), including the speedo, horn, wipers, headlights, turn signals, backup lights, and even the two tiny interior lights that come on automatically when the door is open. I made the engine run (and start) reliably, which was more or less playing whack-a-mole with problems until I didn't have to push it home anymore; this involved cleaning and tuning the carburetor, replacing the accelerator cable, fixing a spotty spark plug cable, and about a hundred other things that showed their heads as I worked on the car.
Once it drove comfortably, I focused on the nice-to-haves. The mice nests in the heater channels were cleared out so I had heat again (albeit very limited, but appreciated in NJ in January). I stripped the car down and tapped out as many dents as I could before giving it correctly-fitting fenders and a matte-black respray. I also found seats that weren't disgusting and reupholstered them myself.
Finished photos attached below!
