[elhigh]

I'm digging the Chevette idea. Not so much the Pinto because I think they were heavier, though the Pinto beats the Chevette, style-wise, all day long. Then again, there are four door Chevettes to be had, and I don't think there were any four door Pinto models at all. Flip a coin, there.

Hmm. If you could find one of those old Pinto kammback wagons, that would look pretty good, provide some decent cargo space. I don't think you'd have to work too hard to find hardware that would fab into it, lots of Ford oily bits will screw right in. And we already know the 2.3 DOHC should be a drop-in replacement, if you wanted to retain some original- or near-original-spec equipment to put it back together when you wanted to sell it on.

+1 on not driving your project in winter. Especially an older, hard to find ride. My grandmother - she lived in Litchfield, about an hour west of the Twins - gave me her 92 Colt Vista when she got too old to drive it, turned out it had pretty much rusted completely through the pinch weld all the way around the body. The only thing holding the car together was gravity and inertia. It even had corrosion cracks in the driveshaft.