Swinger Update

When I'm not obsessing about my next shoot or spending money on the next piece of photography equipment you can find me working on my 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger restoration project.

Quick rewind back to 10 years ago when I was living in NYC, I bought a 4 door 1972 Plymouth Valiant from good friend Stan Cheslock in Orlando Fl. For $400 the car ran great and I managed to drive it to NYC where I drove the car until getting wrecked by a truck in the meat packing district. The car collected a number of parking tickets sitting on the side streets. On the day I decided to donate the car to a charity, a Dominican neighbor convinced me I was crazy for having the car crushed. 10 years later and several thousand of dollars into the car I was T boned by a 90 year old man in Orlando FL.

The day I was wrecked the first person I called was my friend Brad Samuels of Samuels Auto in Sanford Fl. Brad is an extremely talented guy when it comes to cars, paint and body work. I've seen anything from Ford GT 40's to Ferrari's and Porsche's at his shop for repair. Brad's idea was instead of repairing the total loss of the Valiant, buy a nice 2 door that I could interchange the parts with. So after some research I found the Swinger in a Craiglist ad. The car was pretty close to original with its Bruce Rossmeyer sticker still on the deck lid!

I've spent the past 2 months tearing the car completely apart, sandblasting, cleaning metal and having the panels painted in epoxy primer. Right now Brad is teaching me the process of body work. Never did I realize how much work goes into a project like this.

Over the course of this project I'm going to be posting updates on the Swinger project and all the tricks of the trade that Brad is willing to teach me.

Here are a few shots from when I found the car to the current state of progress.