We needed help for our Laguna project, and reader Steve Yoder came through with an important piece of the puzzle.

We needed help for our Laguna project, and reader Steve Yoder came through with an important piece of the puzzle.

You may have seen Steve Yoder’s ’76 Laguna on the cover of our December 2009 issue—in short, he’s a Laguna nut. While I was visiting Steve on my trip to the Goodguys PPG Nationals in Columbus, Ohio, Steve happened to mention he had a bunch of parts for Lagunas. He collects not only whole cars, but parts, and Laguna memorabilia from the ‘70s. When it was time to fix up the interior of our ’75 Laguna project, I remembered that Steve had some parts cars lying around, and called him. We needed a dash pad to send to Just Dashes for restoration, and I hadn’t been able to find one on eBay.

Steve mentioned he knew where one was, and offered to go out and get it for me. I gladly accepted Steve’s generous offer, and now it’s sitting at Just Dashes, awaiting a complete restoration. Steve frequently has Laguna pieces for sale on eBay, and I can vouch for his sizable collection of stuff. Besides the dash and dash pad, I also got a shifter bezel for the console, a shift knob retaining circlip, a visor hinge, and some small, but very important odds and ends. Besides Steve’s help, Dr. Larry Belcher of Deland, FL has also helped out with some important stuff, like an ashtray, an instrument panel bezel, and a glove box door.

When you’re dealing with a rare car and hard-to-find parts, it helps to get hooked into the network. In our case, it’s for Laguna stuff, but every oddball car has a hardcore fan base. I’ve found that it really pays to work with those connections. It can make the difference between a half-baked project, and something really nice.