The Marlin’s story doesn’t have quite the legacy that the Torino has. I have only vague memories of the Marlin growing up. At age 9-10, I was just starting to appreciate cars so to me, this fast-back look was the same as the Plymouth Barracuda and the Dodge Charger. And even the Mustang.
So one day when I was out junkyard crawling for some hard-to-find badging for my Torino, I came across this grouping of Marlins.
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Most were parts cars but it got me interested. So I spent the next 8 years looking for a Marlin. The restored cars were more than I wanted to spend and most others were rusted out and would require a lot of body work. So after a time I slowed my search. It was one those slow times in late 2019 that like the Torino search, it took a tv show to re-start my quest. TV and YouTube automotive personality Steve Magnante had a show on MotorTrend TV called JunkYard Gold. I love his tours and history lessons on cars.
So on one episode, he’s crawling through what turned out to be CTC Auto Ranch and there he is talking about the very cars that I had come across years earlier. That got me looking again and I found one for sale only two hours away at Heartland Classics in Effingham IL (they’ve since closed, I think). It was on it’s third paint job, the interior was almost completely trashed and it had a 6cyl and 3-speed on the column. But it ran and drove, and it was a complete car with very little rust. I later learned it spent most of it’s life in New Mexico.
I made a deal and trailered it home. So that’s where these posts start. I’ve got all kinds of grand plans for resto-modding it. We’ll see how that goes.
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- Bringing the Marlin home
Once I got the car home, it was time to really assess what I had. You can never get a good idea of what you… - Missing Parts MysteryI started tracking parts that might be missing. The trunk was full of chrome and stainless, I assumed it was all the missing parts. A…
- Clean-up on Bay 2 and other ForensicsAs my digging through the car continued I decided that it would be best to gut the interior to get an idea of what I…
- Delegating some of the repairThe car was running, driving, and stopping just fine but there were a number of issues that needed to be a dealt with. The gas…
- Opening for the Headliner
Finding an intact headliner was a real bonus for the Marlin. Usually, headliners in old cars are ripped or have become a mouse-house. Or they… - Headlining the second actThis second part of the headliner repair was actually completed six months after I first got the car. The repaired liner went right back into…
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