Have had it for nearly 2 years now. It did have a pretty good body. Only a very small amount of rust. Most of the rust had already been cut out and replated. Drivers foot well was done. Rear quarters were done but I got them redone as they had a stack of filler on them and when that was removed we found that there were only spot welds about every 1cm or so. So we took all the filler out and completely spot welded the whole thing. After the windows went back in we had the whole van repainted from the front doors back (except the roof). Overall though it was done pretty well.

Next van I get will go back to bear metal so I will start with a less polished example.

The interior should be 63V (buckskin) originally but it came with a black console (although it was from an HJ and we ended up sourcing an HZ one from a ute anyway) and repo door trims. I like black heaps better than brown so we went black.

We stayed away from the slate black which it really should be so that it can be seen to be a non original interior. Kept the top of the firewall painted buckskin so that it is also obvious what the original was. I kept all the buckskin stuff I had that was in good condition including the dash and glove box with the original tyre placard on it. Missing are the arm rests, door trims, sun visors (which I should have kept, but sprayed them black instead) and seats which would have to be re-trimmed anyway. I reckon for less than $1000 it could be back to buckskin if required. I am going to slowly try and acquire more buckskin stuff at swap meets in the future if the condition is good.

I guess with such a rare car these days you have to make sacrifises with what you start with.

As soon as I get some garage space (which means moving house) I will be on the lookout for an XX7 plated 308, 4 speed to start tinkering with. Hope there are some left by then.

Ian