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  • 2 days ago
A dad whose daughter asked as a child if the rusting old Ford Mustang they had in their barn would be hers one day has shared their amazing journey in making the dream a reality by meticulously restoring it. Larry Zimmerman Jr., 47, from Limerick, Pennsylvania, purchased the 1968 Mustang from a widow whose husband had disassembled it in the 80s but passed away before he had time to restore the vehicle. That purchase was made in 2006, the same year Larry's daughter, Sophia, was born, and Larry initially planned for the shell of a car to be a long-term personal project. But as the years went by, the Mustang stood gathering dust in Larry's barn, with the only flicker of hope for any kind of restoration coming when Sophia, who was 6 at the time, asked her father if she could have the finished car one day. Larry promised it could but with the car still sitting as a rusting shell 16 years later, he decided he needed to do something about it to keep his promise. And with a teenage Sophia now 16 still showing an interest in owning it, the pair started a daddy-daughter rebuild project to make it a reality. With the help of three generations of family, Larry and Sophia worked on the car over the next year, capturing a wholesome series of progress videos and photos along the way. Once the car was in working order, Larry decided he wanted to surprise his daughter. He turned to a close friend who owns BCT Customs to secretly give the Mustang color sanded and buffed over two days without his daughter knowing. Larry then stayed up all night to add the final touches and chrome parts, ready for the big reveal. With a video rolling, Larry got Sophia up early one morning and asked her to come to the barn, where her stunned reaction was then captured as Larry drove their finished daddy-daughter project.
Transcript
00:00The Mustang was just sitting for years in an old bank barn.
00:04When she was six, she had asked me,
00:07this is going to be mine someday.
00:08And I was like, yeah, that's going to be yours someday.
00:10And I pretty much made a promise.
00:12I was stuck keeping at that point.
00:15I bought the car in 2006,
00:19probably about two months after Sophia was born.
00:23It was completely stripped down by the previous owner.
00:26Unfortunately, they had passed away
00:28before ever being able to restore it or put it back together.
00:31I picked the car up with a truck and trailer,
00:33brought it back to our barn.
00:35Pretty much that's where it sat for literally 15, almost 16 years.
00:41I always remembered the promise that my dad had made to me.
00:46And when I finally turned 16,
00:48I couldn't wait to start working on my car.
00:51It was pretty much like a whole family affair kind of deal.
00:55Basically three generations, my father was there to help Sophia, her brothers, my wife.
01:04We went through every nut and bolt one by one to restore each and every one of them.
01:11And sometimes when we would end up staying out there for six hours,
01:16it definitely tested my patience with him.
01:19There was a couple of times when maybe I wanted to strangle her,
01:23but she would make me laugh and then I would forget.
01:28I'm a car guy and my father had built my Mustang with me when I was like 14, 15 years old.
01:40And I wanted to do that with my own kids someday.
01:44And it was pretty much a plan I had forever.
01:47So we were basically building, you know, my dream car and her dream car at the same time together.
01:54As I was learning to restore the Mustang,
01:58I actually realized that it's a lot more than just restoring a car.
02:02I definitely learned that if I put a hundred percent of my effort into something,
02:06I'll have like a great reward in the end.
02:09The seats are looking sweet.
02:11Yup.
02:15Sometimes it felt like a long journey to work on my car,
02:19but it was definitely worth it in the end.
02:23So the last thing we needed to do was to get the car painted.
02:27Basically, I had already set everything up with a friend of mine, Brian.
02:31He owns a BCT Customs in Collegeville.
02:35The plan was to fool her into thinking we were going to bring the car down together
02:40and drop it off and he was going to paint it and call us back in a couple of weeks.
02:45What I had done was snuck the car out of here when she was at school one day.
02:57What?
03:01I'm so confused.
03:05Well?
03:07I love it.
03:09When I saw the car like come out of the garage, I was in total shock.
03:14I didn't even say anything else, but what? What?
03:17Because I was so confused.
03:18I just couldn't believe that this car that looked like, you know, wires were everywhere.
03:23It was rusty.
03:24I just couldn't believe that this car was this amazing, pretty blue Mustang.
03:30It's just my everyday car.
03:33Rain or shine, I drive it every single day.
03:36For me, it's more than just a car.
03:38It's a great memory that I will be able to have forever with my dad.
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