OK, those subthreads in my recent humungous über-thread on "made in China" about automobiles has me thinking about a long-ago car I used to own, and whether in retrospect I could've gotten it running.
Bear in mind this is completely hypothetical at this time, as the car is long gone, as are the days when I enjoyed tinkering with cars (hate it now).
I used to own a cute li'l car that I got for next to nothing; a Sunbeam Minx. Not an Alpine, mind you: instead of a sports car, this was a little 4-door sedan. Really compact. Ran but needed a whole shitload of stuff, from the drive train to headlight trim to who knows what else. This was back in the 19-ought-80s.
Back then, in the days before the Internet (is it actually possible that we used to survive--nay, thrive--back in the days when you had to use these black instruments called "telephones" and look up stuff in catalogs and mail order stuff?), I found a place that had all that stuff needed to restore Rootes Group cars. Forget the name, but it was an outfit up in Canada, if I remember correctly.
So I'm just wondering if it would have been possible to fix up that little car, and how much trouble and money it might have taken. If it were running today, how much would it be worth? Haven't seen one of them since then.