I purchased this vehicle a few days ago. It is painted brown; no stripes; no decals; just brown. When I looked at the car, I didn't pay much attention to emblems and such, that would be tell-tale signs of a Y88. I told the oldest (15) to start pulling the interior out, and as he was doing it, I started looking at the emblems, T-tops, etc., and I had a gut feeling it could be a SE. I had him pull out the rear seats to get to the build sheet, which to my surprise, was still there. Another surprise was the Y88 code on the build sheet. For $1600, it has a little corrosion, but not too bad for a numbers matching Y88. The build sheet does have the Y88 code and matches the VIN. It is not a WS6, though, and it's an automatic.
This changes what I was planning on doing to the car. I'm restoring the body and interior to the Y88 specifications, but will probably rebuild the chassis and powertrain to something more desireable. I won't do anything to the car that I cannot easily change back to original, i.e. no body or frame modifications. The original parts will be retained, in case I want to do a concourse restoration in the future.
Everything I've read says the Y88s had black exterior window trim; however, mine is chrome. I understand someone could have changed this, but I don't see the RPO codes (B77/B89) for black exterior trim on the build sheet. Is this common?
The cowl tag states 62B (Camel Tan) for the interior, but the build sheet states Buckskin. Is this because Buckskin was cancelled in '77, but orders for Y88s were taken in '77?
I can understand fading of the gold accented dash and steering wheel; however, my dash is silver. All of the gold would've had to fade off. I see no trace of gold on the bezel; however, I can clearly see it on the steering wheel spokes. Is this common, or is it a factory error or someone replaced it with the incorrect bezel?
I'm sure I'll have further questions later on. Thanks!
