The Continuing Saga of a 12 Years Old’s Dream to Rebuild Her Own Car

Now this is a great, and ongoing, story!

At age 12 Kathryn DiMaria convinced her parents to let her buy and begin restoring a 1986 Pontiac Fiero with $450 in babysitting money. Over the past five years, she’s been restoring every part of her Fiero by hand. And learning how to weld, grind, upholster, and even rebuild an engine.

and here’s another video about her…

She’s 17 now, and although the car isn’t quite finished, she’s still working on it! You can visit Kathryn’s Fiero forum here. It’s a fascinating read, and you can see just how much work she’s done over the years on it. The latest photos I can find are on this page, where she’s starting to reassemble the car near completion. But that was from 2014.

Kathryn’s latest posts are all about electrical issues, and reassembling the vehicle. So hopefully she’ll at least get it all finished up by the time it’s time to go off to college!

If you want to show some love, her welding art is here. Buy some!