The ’70 Monte Carlo was upscale muscle when new, and nothing has changed.

It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet in this day and age. The world wide web has opened a lot of new geographical areas to car enthusiasts that might otherwise not be considered when looking for cars or parts. Take for instance Terri Booth. She tells us, “I bought my 1970 Monte Carlo in February of 2014 in Avon Lake, Ohio. I was fortunate enough to locate it from an ad on Craigslist.” Finding a car on an Internet site can be a great thing, but sometimes, you don’t always get what you bargained for.

Terri says she is having too much fun with the car to take the time to tear the engine out and detail under the hood.

We’re not saying that there are unscrupulous people selling things online, but descriptions can – and a lot of times do – vary. Lucky for Terri, that wasn’t an issue when she finally saw her Monte. “I purchased it knowing it had paint issues and would need some repairs, but the car looked great and I couldn’t pass up the deal.”

She also learned that the car was the perfect candidate for building her hot rod. She told us, “It has a 396 cubic-inch engine in it, but it came from the factory with a 350 cubic-inch small-block. The car was originally green, but the previous owner painted it black and put a black interior in it.”

She took the car back her place, and she chuckles as she says, “I’d only driven it up and down the street before I bought it, and then on and off the trailer. I didn’t really do anything to it that first year, other than install new valve covers, air cleaner, and an HEI ignition.

Terri says the paint turned out nice, even though her dad didn’t have an actual paint booth.

It was after the car show season ended for 2015 that she decided it was time to handle the bodywork and paint. According to Terri, “I am lucky to have a dad that could handle the paint and bodywork with me. My dad has been in auto body repair since he was 18 years old. He’s now 80 years old, and still doing restoration work every day except Sundays. He’s my biggest hero and role model, and the man I respect the most in this world. Oh yeah, he can still work circles around me.”

The interior doesn’t look bad for being original.

The team started by stripping the exterior of the car to bare metal. Terri continued, “Boy, did we ever find a mess! There had to be six layers of old paint and primer on this car. Under some of those layers was body filler that was almost two inches thick.” The left quarter-panel had dents and rust holes, and the right quarter-panel had been patched and repaired so badly that they ended up replacing it and the right door. Other than that, the car was in relatively decent shape.

Her father covered the newly-repaired sheetmetal with a fresh coat of a clear-coated black. Terri quipped, “The fact that an 80-year-old guy and his clueless daughter restored the car in six months was a feat in and of itself. Especially since I mostly got in the way.”

Terri says that although she doesn’t know what has ever been done to the engine, the car runs great, and she is having a hard time convincing herself to tear the engine out of the car for a good cleaning and painting. We can’t say that we blame her. It’s hard to feel like you’re taking steps backwards when you can already enjoy your classic.

Do you want to read about more Home-Built Heros? All you need to do is click here. If you own a Home-Built Hero, we want to hear about it. Since we’ve started the Home-Built Hero series, we have received more than a few candidates, but we are still in need of more. If you want to see more cars built by you the readers, send us a few pictures of your car showing the engine, interior and exterior, along with all of the pertinent information, and we’ll make you Internet famous. You can send your submissions to [email protected].