Fast forward 26 years. Pat's sedan restoration efforts had been stymied by the lack of a suitable donor, and his career had taken him abroad for many of those years. The remnants of the hearse languished in the shed of a friend where Pat had parked it in 1990, and after subsequently losing touch with that friend, Pat thought perhaps the car was now long gone. At a chance encounter with the friend at a family funeral in 2016, however, he learned that not only was the vehicle still around - it was exactly where he had parked it in 1990! Now employed full time in residence at Castle Oliver, he brought the rusting hulk home with him in September of that year.
In 2019, Pat commented, "3 years ago today I dragged this wreck out of that there shed ‘where it sat for 26 years. Stopped for a snap, didn’t delay... on the road again!!"Home to Castle Oliver
Serendipity plays a large role in this story! On the hunt once more for a donor car, Pat spotted one on Facebook in November of 2017, and pinned down its location with Google Earth; a LHD limo, painted all black, but with a suspicious patch of pink!
Pat Conroy wrote:Now the LHD limo was back in my possession. This time, not as before. It had a hard life. Mostly stored outside, several attempts to be restored and even customised but never completed. Motor removed, Badly patched floor and rockers, the whole firewall had rotted out and a botched up plate of steel in its place. The front and rear pillars are almost completely rotted, all chrome trim and interior trim was gone. The trunk lid was gone and a sheet of galvanised steel welded over the whole back of the car. I bought it from a guy in the north who had great intentions of restoring it, he even bought a trunk lid from the US but the car remained rotting away out in the weather for several years before I found it.
So now I didn’t feel so guilty removing the parts I required to complete the only surviving saloon ever built here. After all there are 2 other limos in the country.
Now that limo is in dry storage. I have great hopes for that car. It will most definitely be brought back to life but never as a limo. I would think a station wagon/ suburban camper car. Possibly with a diesel.
Now work on the sedan could begin in earnest - and soon it did. Here are some shots of the restoration under way (apologies to Pat, if these appear out of sequence).
