Another MX-5...

I bought a 1990 ADM MX-5 in red a while back in 2016, which will be the subject of another post, or a few...
We've enjoyed the car so much we wanted the kids to come with us on drives. Unfortunately that meant a 4-seater convertible, of which there aren't that many. Add in my requirements that it be able to go on a club permit, be decently priced, simple to work on, and properly sporty, and you'll see the list whittled away very quickly.
Then one day like a lightbulb going on wifey and I jokingly said we should just buy another MX-5! I quickly set about looking for one because when your wife says you can get another car, you'd better take it!
Easier said than done though. The ideal car would be an NA (gotta love those pop up headlamps), Australian delivered, mileage comfortably under 200k and not ridiculously priced. This was in summer, and the next 6 months went by as I scoured all the ads and was confronted by a gaggle of cars that had high mileage, beaten up, badly modified (and irreversibly so), or sellers who must have gotten mixed up between Mercedes and Mazda in their asking prices.
More than once I've been tempted to go to other cars, most notably the SW20 MR2 and began searching for those instead while keeping an eye on the NA market.
Just as I was going to view a promising SW20, lo and behold an ad appeared for a white ADM model with a little over 150k on it and located in not too impossibly far Warragul.
Went to check it out, was owned by an old gentleman who was quite upfront about the car. Cosmetically it needed a lot of work but mechanically it was supposed to be pretty spot on.
During my test drive indeed it did feel much better than my first MX5 when I first brought it home. Had an aftermarket exhaust system which was properly loud (I was advised to keep it under 3k rpm when driving past cops...) and adjustable KYB AGX dampers on lowered springs.
The paint was awful, and I didn't even want to know what was under the carbon-fibre-look wrap on the bonnet and boot panels... Soft top was also buggered and more or less glued down on the back.
Long story short I bought it and with it comes the road to restoring it...