Here is the 1963 Dodge Polara that I recently bought. Found it on ebay, was located about 20minutes from home and the price was right, so I brought it home. Turns out it's a California-built car and darn-near rot free with just some soft spots in the trunk floor above the gas tank. Rest of the floors, firewall, cowl, framerails, window channels (basically everything) is solid and rot-free. Looks like it was a 361 or 383 bigblock car going by the fendertag. It already has a '65 8-3/4 rear in it with the better 1-piece axles and a "489" case. Somebody "flipped" it and mounted it with the leafs over the housing. That's gonna have to change, but oh well. Frontend has the torsionbars cranked all the way up so the upper control arms are hitting the stops, even with an engine/tranny in place. Car had a 4speed trans in it at some point, with the proper pedals and clutch linkage assembly hung under the dashboard and a good size hole cut in the floor. I might put it back together with a 4speed, just for grins (and burnouts) at first. It'll eventually go back to the original "dial-a-win" pushbutton 3speed auto trans. Interior is entirely removed, although the car came with the original rear seat in decent condition.
I did a little so far this season. Got the rest of the inside stripped. Found some wierd stuff in the dashboard:
The floorpan is in really, really good condition. There is some surface scale, but it's just surface stuff. Biggest problems are the hole that somebody bashed/hacked for a 4-speed and the holes that were drilled for different seat mounts. The mounts weren't braced, so the floor cracked in a few spots. That'll need to be fixed. Still better than having to repair rust! I still don't know for sure what's up with the "bumper button" where the cig lighter used to be. It's wired into the pushbutton mechanism and the engine wiring harness. I guess it had to be an ignition switch; but it's a real odd way to do it! The bumperbutton with a budwieser bottlecap and the bumpersticker in the rear window lead me to believe that somebody had fun in this car before I got it:
I found a clutchflite transmission for it! Will use the pushbutton shifter with the 4speed clutch pedal assembly.
