AUTOS CARS CUSTOM

We’re still pluggin’ along on the Isetta. Usually just one or two girls at a time and Mark, who at 12, was with the project from the very first day in May of 07. One of the girls, I call her the son I never had, managed to get a three hour block every Thursday morning. When she signed on the car was spread all over the shop, unpainted and looking rather forlorn.

We are doing our best to make this a very true restoration, and that has taken a lot of research and a library of over 700 photographs. It took quite a while to find an untouched original cabriolet to crawl around, but we managed to locate two, and they have been an incredible help. Oddball things (try to find new 8mm X 1.25 nuts with a 14mm head, they only make them with 13mm heads now) we either make or have made. We’ve discovered, through several very knowledgeable enthusiasts both here and in Germany, quite a few little known (or perhaps rarely applied) facts that help us to perform an accurate restoration. We’re shooting for a finished, ready to show, car by July. There are some great guys out there, building some beautiful cars; it’ll be fun to see how this little back-woods build stacks up.
....................................................................................................http://www.teamisetta.com/

We still get e-mails on the Team Sprite website http://www.teamsprite.com/ , I think it’s near 20,000 hits to date, quite remarkable for a little school in the foothills of Northern California. http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2007/01/high-school-auto-restoration-class.html

Most of those young ladies have graduated from, or are just finishing up college, but we still keep tabs on each other. I’ve known several of them since they were eight or nine and it’s been a real honor to watch them grow up.

You may recall that four of those young women and I, went in together and purchased the bugeye as a tub and 21 boxes of unlabeled parts. When RM auctioned the car 18 eighteen months later, we paid off a substantial Visa card and split the remainder of the sale price. With the Isetta, we’ll be free to show the car for a year or two without concerning ourselves about financial obligations. Because it was to be a rotating class, and there was no school funding for something like this, I picked up the tab on the Isetta and the money can stay there until the next project pops up.

Brian Powers http://www.teamisetta.com/
Living Wisdom School
Nevada City, Calif

to read all about the Team Sprite or Team Isetta coverage: http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/label/Team%20sprite

The Oct. Barrett Jackson auction had the Team Sprite car auctioned and Automobile Magazine in the Feb 2009 issue spotlighted it, page 93. It was only driven 34 miles since the restoration, so the first owner must have kept it as a showpiece is my guess. It sold the first time for 24 thou, this time for 20 thou. That first owner should have enjoyed it more, and kept it longer.

http://www.livingwisdom.org/highschool/latest_news/High_articles/AHMag-YouGoGirls.pdf for a 6 page magazine pdf that cover the story really well.

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2008/12/in-favorite-all-time-car-stories-is.html

In Jan 07, a story spread around the internet about a school that had a really cool English teacher, a really cool project, and some teens with the best class that we all wish we could have been part of.