Alex T. Farley's '76 Cutlass Supreme Brougham 442

This is a 1976 Cutlass Supreme Brougham 442. My dad bought it in 1977. We are the second owners. The first owner of the car lived only 20 miles away and was a lady in her later 20's at the time I believe. My dad bought it from a local dealership called "Macke's." Maybe some of you who read this know of this good dealership. Well he had an 8 track player installed. It worked well for a while but as all 8 tracks started to get hungry. I recently put a cassette deck with prongs to fit the dash without mutalation in. A cheap sony but it works. We used the car as a family car from 1977 to 1987. My parents divorced and my mother got the car. After she remarried she bought a mini van and the 442 was put in a garage for 7 years until I turned 17.
The car was re painted once fully I believe in 85 or so then in 90 I think the white was re done again. Funny I thought at the time since it wasn't being used and just sitting.
My first car was another 76 but a blue and white one with no vinyl top. It was in bad shape, bondo all over, the seats were fixed not with the original vinyl but with cloth, somebody spliced different vinyl trim in on the moldings, and someone put a cassette deck into the car which massacured the dash board. I then put in a cd player to cover ove what happened to the panel.
Back to the red one here. I started using the car in 1994 in just the summers since it was in a lot better shape than my blue one. Though the vinyl seats had been patched many times with inserts of original vinyl, and the paint was rusting out and the bondo on the rear quarters, the only bondo one car, was bubling. Very slightly at first but grew unfortanately. In the summer of 1997 after my summer classes in college got out I had started work on the car in a major project, one of many steps. Since the car had sit for 7 years in a garage where it was humid the paint, new white from a few years back, had started to rust off. I bought some new olds white and a half gallon of the red paint for the rest. I then started sanding the white to do it first. I taped off the numbers and sanded well then sand blasted the rusty areas to metal. I then sanded the rest of the car. I did not paint in myself I had help from a very talented man named Don Fuss. The paint turned out well but I plan later in the future to do it professionaly and replace the rear quarters with clean quarters from Arizona junk yards. I had taken the seats out of the car to be recovered almost completely with original white vinyl. I didn't need to recover it all since the hidden parts were in good shape yet and the head rests were not browned.
The car is now mine all but in title and registration which I will have changed sometime. I am now working on saving money for the next steps of my restoration. I am now working on a deal for a nice southern rear bumper in excellent shape, a driverside mirror, the old one's ball that the peg sticks in split in its age. I also am thinking of putting positraction on the car in the same ratio as the car has now in stock shape. I want the same because once I graduate and the car is done I plan on using it on summer weekends and maybe a trip here or there and want to keep the 17-18 miles per gallon it gets on a good day.
The after the above is to re vinyl the top, duel out the exhaust with good pipe and two turbo mufflers, pull the motor, and do a complete overhaul, before any major things suddenly occur, paint the motor olds blue, paint the underhood area black.
Along with having the radiator looked at by a shop, nothing wrong now with it but..., replace all the hoses, put a carb kit on, replace all break lines, boots, and break pads, and all the essential parts in the engine such as main bearings, pistons, piston rings, cam kit, lifters, a valve job, oil pump, water pump, fuel pump, power steering pump, all the seals, a high quality distributor, probably the Napa gold one, these good sparking spark plugs wear the anoid is split for a duel spark. The so called Split fire spark plugs don't double spark well from a parts guy I know.

I am hoping that a company will start making the vinyl door moldings, trim, back panels, rear seat panels, and such again for this year of car since only 2 years of this design were made who knows when that will happen. But after the engine, exhaust, vinyl top, differential, bumper, and the other above I will be done until later professional paint job.