I have been able to make some more progress on the sheetmetal rebuild, and also have found the original owner's wife/widow who remarried awhile after her husband was killed in Vietnam.
After much searching I located where she lived and got a phone number. She answered the phone on the 2nd try, and was very nice and willing to discuss the car.
It turns out her husband Willie Debolt had bought the car without her knowledge, and she was pretty ticked off when he brought it home the 1st time. They had only been married a few months and she didn't want a car payment while they were saving money to get a house.
He taught her how to drive a stick, and while Willie was away in basic training, she and her brother would go out and drive the car around, even though she was told not to let her brother ever drive it.
As the weather turned colder later that year (1969), she took the car over to a local dealer for an appraisal and to see about selling it. She had told her husband she wouldn't drive it in the snow.
Well, the dealer talked her into selling it to him. So it wasn't even a year old when they sold it, and before Willie was killed in Nam the next March.
The owner of the dealer was named Lou Sprague, The dealer was somewhere in the Warsaw, IN area, so if anybody here remembers him and the name of his dealership, that could help me follow where the car went next.
Here are some progress pics showing the rebuild of a very rusty cowl area.
Enjoy
