The Lancia Beta coupe in original Maya Yellow with green velour interior (so 1975)

I was quite willing to ignore the fact that this car clearly wore the wrong bonnet; from a '76- 2litre instead of the flatter (& rarer) 1800 bonnet, & also featuring a few pieces of louvered aluminium screwed(!) to it as fake bonnet vents. Not surprisingly though this turned out to hide far worse secrets as the alloy covered cracks in the thick layer of body filler covering the bonnet, & the bonnet had been replaced as the result of a relatively minor knock to the front corner...the 'repairers' went to some effort welding in a new patch to the corner structure before attempting to refit the bonnet & clearly discovering that the upper radiator support had been bowed upward by the impact...so their solution was to bash the whole lot downward & cover the evidence with filler.
Unfortunatly the problems didn't end there as the car had evidently been left sitting around uncared for for some time, allowing rotting leaves & water to extensively rust through the cowl & plenum area, which had also been 'repaired' with body filler & tin-foil.
I already had a black one in bits!

So.. so far I have chiselled off the 'bolt-on' frt fenders and the remains of the plenum area, pulled out the dashboard, windscreen, wipers, heater & cut up the remains of a Lancia Beta HPE to provide a new plenum which has been re-stamped with the coupe's chassis number & is now almost ready to fit... though I'm still working on patching the HPE cowl panels holes around the windscreen frame & might end up cutting up another sick HPE for its cowl instead, & for its upper radiator support structure...
At least the rest of the body is rust free & carefully assembled as Lancia intended.

I've also bought yet another coupe to distract me... Also 1975 Maya Yellow, with a red interior that has been re-trimmed at some stage. Rust looks far more manageable, though the cylinder head has been removed & currently resides in the boot. Thankfully this one was far more realistically priced!