The Story of a dead guy, a farmer, and an ocean blue swallow.

[IronTrap]

This car I've been after for what seems like 3-4 years. It all started on a local GTG thread here on the forums where an aircooled member posted up a picture of an oceanic bleu 76 rabbit on top of a scrap pile. I freaked out immediately and began hounding him for details. "Is it for sale?" "Where is it, is it savable?" The normal reaction to a find like that. It turns out that a friend of his had found it on top of a scrap pile, drug it back to his shop, and had no intentions to sell it.





For anyone that knows me well, I always have a list of potential cars and parts deals in my back pocket. I am a firm believer that if you are persistant on following up on a deal on something, it will eventually payback. It definitely pays off for me, time and time again. This car is a perfect example. I kept in touch with local aircooled guy Phil from time to time telling him to remind his friend I'd buy it the second he decided to sell. Well while on a business trip in Boston this past Tuesday, I got the message "He needs money and wants to sell ASAP". I immediately dropped everything, called and sorted out the details to pick the car up Thursday after I arrived home.

The story as told to me by the PO "Josh" was that he was working a job tearing down an old slate roof on a barn, and was looking for a farmer down the road that had a scrap pile where they could unload the old slate. He walked onto the farmer's property and found he had a large pile of scrap. Atop of this giant pile was nothing other than a funky colored blue early rabbit. He struck a deal with the farmer and found out that the farmer had bought a building at an estate sale and all of the contents inside came with it. The car was found stored inside, and hadn't been driven since 1989-ish. Having no interest in the car, the owner put it on top of his pile of scrap, planning to have it weighed and crushed with the rest of his scrap metal. He told Josh his son and him had tried to get it running so they could put a brick on the accelerator and drive it off of a local cliff








In the process of them trying to "get it running", they wrecked the (what looked to be clean) original "smoothie" hood, and tweaked the core support a little. It seems most of the damage to the body of this car was from the farmer moving it around with his forklift and using "knuckle-dragger" techniques to try and tinker with it The farmer proceeded to take it down from the pile with his forklift/crane and set it in the back of Josh's dump truck/car hauler and he took it home from there. Josh also found the previous owners son who apparently speaks little to no english.. and wanted nothing to do with the car or to give more info other than it was his fathers car..





So here are the photos from last night towing it home, and as it sits this morning. I have a matching 2 door 76 oceanic bleu car I've been slowly building for like 6 or 7 years. I NEEDED this car to have the matching 4 door sister. It has an interesting color combo with a burnt-orange vinyl interior. It had some interesting options on it. Hopefully some of you early-rabbit nerds like me pick up on some of the stuff in the pictures. I'll update as I dig into it and start bringing her back life!

As far as my research can tell, this color was originally a bug or bus color only and they must have had some extra paint left over in good old Wolfsburg, Germany and they decided to offer this neat color until they ran out of the paint. It seems to be a 1976 model year only color.. with most of them being early 1976 cars with all of the One-Year-Only parts that came on the 1975 model year cars. This makes this already rare early car even more of a find since it is potentially a color that was only offered for a few months!

[Death Trap]

Cool story andgreat early find.
I remember a junkyard that brought in an early orange two-door rabbit and put it atop a pile of cars similar to your pic. Had a complete Kamei kit in black with BBS's and tons of period aftermarket parts.

[veedubman91]

nice work saving another one there Mr. Murray

[rabbito]

Very nice...check the vin on your other Ocean blue 76...wonderhow close they are?

awesome find and cant wait to see it.

[IronTrap]

Very nice...check the vin on your other Ocean blue 76...wonderhow close they are?

awesome find and cant wait to see it.

My "blue baby" is definitely a few months at least later as it missed the cutoff of having the swallow rear panel.. but got all of the other bits.


I can NOT wait to start digging through my archives of parts and using some of my early junk I have stashed that is perfect for this car... thinking OE rubber floor mats, OE 4 door aluminum 74 door sills, etc, etc.

[-teknien-]

Good save!

[MicroCADDY]

SAVE OF THE YEAR







be sure to route the new brake lines OUT SIDE the car. with them inside under the carpet they don't get air to dry out & rust fast & then you have brake fluid all over your carpet making you have fudged up carpet.

Your far from that BUT keep it in mind when you do

[Big CADDY]

subscribed.

need a rear window?

[IronTrap]

subscribed.

need a rear window?

I'm gonna go dig around in my other parts storage at my dad's house.. I'm pretty sure I have the matching oceanic bleu hood and a rear window for this stashed away somewhere.. just gotta find the damn thing.. thanks dude

goals for the weekend are to get a rear window in it, the hood mounted, clean the interior bits up, see how the paint buffs up, and try and see if I can maybe get it to run....

[gtiboy66]

Great story and sweet ride. I see it was a delux

[GTI MK1]

Awesome! Another sweet project to watch.

[Rockmonky]

wow - amazing find

looking forward to seeing the progression

[JUS_GT_EYEZ]

Nice Save Matt..

I Love that lighter..

[rabbito]

I love how it is missing a hood and what do you know? Matt has a spare Ocean blue hood in storage.

[ih8erickempf]

VERY nice score... couldnt have gone to a better person

[burritowagen]

So awesome man.

[ddg60]

i love these cars!!!!
cool story matt


Danny

[President Lincoln]

Awesome save

[Digital K.]

this is right up your alley man!

[deathhare.]

[vr6pack111587]

Sick find!

[700lbBench]

Very cool. Really crazy looking pic...just sitting up there on top of a junkpile. It will be cool to see what happens with this...it could be a real rags to riches story.

[aeffertz]

Awesome find and good luck. Can't wait to watch this one.

[Jory]

These are the kind of threads that make me drop in the forums every once and awhile

Awesome save, I'll be keeping an eye on the progress

[Mk1Madness]

Want to convert it to squares? I have a spare nice square rad support

[MattRad]

This will go nicely with that beautiful patina.

[g60vw]

You compoets dash and door cards sonuvabeatrice!! Good job Matt!!

[standard125r]

I have seen this car up close, and it was a really good save. I'm glad to see it in your hands, as I had hoped to see it on the road for the past two years, now I know it will be completed at some point.

[lilrabbitGTi95]

Why cant we find lovely cars like this down here?! Nice find! Incredibly jealous of you...

[Kaneb]

Thats great, glad to see it saved! There is a twin 4 dr like that here rolling around i've always liked!

[IronTrap]

Thanks everyone, like I told Josh the PO.. there probably isn't a better, more enthusiastic person to own this particular car than me

Tonight I got a couple hours to tinker with the car and crawl around it some more.

First I got some purple power and an old toothbrush and went to town removing dirt and mold off of the door cards. I am ecstatic with how nice they came out. The unique color of this interior really can be seen now.

before:



After:



I discovered why the majority of the car is so structurally clean.. thanks to the rust-proofing injection schedule this car must have went through. The little plugs are all over the body. I am sure they are the sole reason this car is still solid.









I also removed the add-on black passenger mirror and added an original swallowtail block of plug out of my archives. Much better!





And another cool oddity on the hood.




Tonight I ran to my other storage area and grabbed the extra oceanic bleu smoothie hood I had stashed and another rear window. planning to get the both of these installed tomorrow in the AM. Planning to spend the majority of my day digging into her, so more to come tomorrow.

[kdeboer]

Subscribed.

[VWM4YH3M]

Subscribed
Can't wait to see more work man

[Biodome]

Nice save Matt. Same color interior that my Derby had.

[chrissev2]

This is so cool. I love it when people save old rabbits like that.

Nota bene: Did someone actually try to tow-start an AUTOMATIC? That shows perhaps a slight lack of mechanical knowledge (as to for example how a torque converter works).

Looking forward to this build.