I'm 17 years old (I know many of you may have a heart attack hearing that, I apologize) and I live in Upstate New York, in a town called Naples (how fitting!). This is my second car, I have previously owned a 1994 Honda Civic, which is still intact in my driveway as we speak. My father bought this car for me, we've always wanted to own something like this, and it is going to make a great father/son project restoring it. My dad used to own an MGB and a Triumph TR7, similar to this of course, so he's really excited about having it.
I want to let you all know that I am aware of how amazing this car is, I fell in love even when I saw a small low-resolution picture on the website posting it for sale, and of course its far better in person. I am a very cautious person, not your standard teenager, and I will be extremely careful when driving this car. I'm actually a pretty big nerd, so nobody has to worry about me going to parties or anything like that. I also NEVER plan on "tricking it out", I'm going to keep it as Fiat-like as possible, and not do anything radical at all. The previous owner wished to restore it to its original condition entirely, I may add parts from different years if I like them better, but I will be entirely tasteful about it.
Now on to what you all want to know, the car. I have a couple pictures I took right before it got dark:
Front angle, top up. The car's paint job isn't the best, its not the original colour either. We plan on either restoring it to the original colour, or choosing something a bit different that will still look good.
Front view. Sorry its a bit blurry, I was excited hehe. Looks good from here too. Bit of a scratch on the windshield, can't see it in the picture, but it was probably made by the (very slow) windshield wipers.
Front angle, top down. The top is a bit ripped, going to be replaced. The boot also has a small rip in it. Some chips in the paint job in a few random places, but all in all it still looks great.
Last but not least, the interior. Once again sorry for the blurry picture. It doesnt look as good as this in person, although its still in relatively good condition. Small tears on the lower console. One thing the previous owner mentioned that I also noticed is the seemingly rare light-blue interior. I haven't seen this anywhere so far in pictures of other Spiders online, and I haven't come across any interior replacement parts of the same colour. I was curious what you all knew about this colour, how rare it really is, and if any of you know places where I could find parts of the same colour. If it truly is rare I'd like to keep it that colour and choose a paint job around it.
One last thing, I believe when we repaint it we may go with the original colour as mentioned before, or possibly I have been considering painting it white with racing stripes down the front the same colour as the interior. These are the only two ideas I have thought up so far, and I'm not going to be painting it for a little while. I was wondering if anyone had a blank image of this car that I could use in a drawing program or something preview what it might look like. Or if anyone has come across images of something similar that may help aswell. Again these are just some of my first ideas and I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, going to drive it around for a few months to get used to it and see if anything needs to be done. More ideas may come to me.
All in all I love this car already, and can't wait to drive it around more. I promise you all I'll keep it safe and running smoothly. I've looked around these forums earlier while I was waiting to go and pick it up, and I've seen alot of great information and you all seem like great people. I'm very excited and comforted to have this resource to better inform me on anything I need to know about this wonderful car.
Nick
