Ian: As much as it pains me to say this, you ought to look at what you have: a 25-year old high mileage car with a marginal interior, bad trans, and prob'ly a blown head gasket and/or a bad radiator. The fact that it's been sitting for quite a while doesn't help, either. I suspect that, once you got into it, you'd find that it needed belts and hoses, a tune up, a battery, tires and above all, brakes. It most likely wouldn't pass CA emissions, if it wasn't old enough for an exemption, and I would guess that you don't have a lot of dough to put into reviving the old Swede. As such, restoring the car isn't for you. As far as the donated car tax dodge is concerned, unless you're about to place some grossly inflated value on the beast, don't waste your time...it's not worth the hassle from the IRS when they find out you're a tax cheat...and they WILL find out. You might want to part the car out, if your neighbors don't mind a half-eaten hulk in front of the house, THEN get the rest of it to the junk yard. At least you'd make something off of the car. Or, as the previous post suggested, sell it for what you can get out of it...don't be greedy. It's not worth that much anymore. Sorry, mon ami, it sounds that it's time for this one to hit the trail.

Brad