This homely tatterdemalion of an old convertible spent the past two years being passed from used car dealer to used car dealer across South Florida. But it has found new life as the second in our series of auto makeovers.

The first was our Oldsmobile Cutlass. As we said then, our aim is not to do ground-up restorations and have 100-point collector cars. Rather, it's to take a somewhat dowdy and frayed older car and rejuvenate it, making it an inexpensive and fun ride. So, for $1500 we plucked this LeBaron from a lot full of Corvettes and exotic sports cars.

What were we thinking? Well, for one thing, it's a convertible, so we knew it would be fun to drive--even if it is just a lowly Chrysler K-car.

And, for another, it's just a lowly K-car. Millions of Dodge, Plymouth and Chrysler models were built off this same basic platform, so parts and know-how are inexpensive and easy to come by. There are even turbocharged and racing versions, if you want to get carried away with hop-up parts.

Then there's the fact that, having spent its whole life in South Florida, this 14-year-old carried not one speck of rust. And at 94,000 miles it obviously hadn't been abused. We have friends who've put 250,000 miles on K-cars without doing much more than change the oil, so the reliability of the mechanicals is pretty well documented. No scary surprises lurking anywhere here.

Also, in its day, this was a top-of-the-line Chrysler, so it was equipped with every luxury feature available back then, including a/c, power windows, power top, 6-way power seat and a bucket-seat interior with console shifter.

Finally, every dealer who owned the car put some money into it. It had a new top, rebuilt MacPherson struts, a fancy sound system and a lot of new parts in the engine compartment. It even had new tires, albeit the wrong size.

There's a lesson here. Where other people saw just a ratty old K-car, we saw a gem that could be polished up. Maybe not a diamond--more like a zircon in the rough--but still a car that had another 100,000 miles of cheap fun left in it. On Wall Street, this is called being a contrarian, and a lot of successful people have made their fortunes by betting against the crowd.

We're not saying you should invest in Chrysler K-cars, Lord knows. What we are saying is that the concept of buying a car that nobody else wants, but one that's cheap and easy to fix up, is a perfectly valid way to have a lot of fun, learn some basic auto mechanics and drive a car you might not otherwise be able to afford. A 1998 Chrysler Sebring convertible, for example, costs almost 20 times what we paid for this old LeBaron. But 95% of the time--like when you're cruising to the ice cream stand on a soft summer night, top down and radio blasting--the LeBaron is the Sebring's functional equivalent.

When we got our LeBaron home, family and neighbors were quick to make rude remarks. We stoically ignored them. We degreased the engine compartment and chassis, put the LeBaron up on jackstands and went through it from stem to stern, looking for mechanical problems.

We found surprisingly few. It needed spark plugs and wires, fresh fluids and hoses, a new gasket between the exhaust manifold and exhaust pipe, a battery, taillight bulbs, a new muffler and brake shoes all around. For less than $400 in parts and a day's work, we had a convertible that started on the first kick, showed no smoke and drove as well as any 4-cylinder LeBaron ever drove.

A few hours of wiping and spritzing with brake cleaner and Armor All, and we made the engine compartment shine like new. The Aquatred tires on stock steel wheels were off-loaded to a friend--who put them on his minivan--and replaced with a set of proper-size Goodyear HP all-season tires mounted on American Racing alloy wheels that happened to be on sale at the local auto parts store for $49 apiece.

Next we attacked the formerly white bucket-seat interior. Simple Green and lacquer thinner turned out to be the most effective cleaning agents for taking off years of discoloration and ground-in grime. One of the things that attracted us to this particular car was the absence of rips or tears in the upholstery, so cleaning followed by a finish swipe with Armor All quickly made it good as new. We did splurge for a new white top boot to cover the retracted convertible top. This was still available from the local Chrysler dealer for less than $100.

The power windows didn't work, but that turned out to be nothing more than dirty contacts in the switches mounted in the driver's door. The dash top had been destroyed by a decade and a half of Florida sun, and the ashtray was gone. But this is one of a jillion K-cars, remember? A junked Chrysler sedan contributed its dash pad and ashtray for $5 and 10 minutes of work. Installing them in our convertible literally took less time than it takes to tell about it.

The convertible top had been professionally replaced, but a huge pair of aftermarket stereo speakers stuck into the top well prevented it from retracting. Removing the speakers not only allowed the top to go down but improved the sound reproduction of the radio, too. A quick scrubbing with Simple Green and Armor All restored the shiny blackness to the top and top frame.

Paint has become a real problem in low-buck auto makeovers. Ten years ago, you could get a "50/50" paint job--you know, one that looks good from 50 ft. away as the car drives by at 50 mph--for $300. A concours-quality paint job was $2000, if you had a friend in the business. Nowadays, at least in our neighborhood, a quickie respray in the same color costs $1000 and a quality paint job starts at $4000. A color change is at least $3000, and that's if you don't worry about color-matching the engine compartment or trunk.

Realistically, we should have either rubbed out the chalky white paint and been satisfied or done a backyard respray in the same color. As any professional painter will tell you, the secret to a successful paint job is good preparation. In the past, we've actually prepped a car and painted it with spray cans from the hardware store. It works, though your finger gets numb from holding down those little nozzles all afternoon.

This time, we got it into our minds that the squarish LeBaron looked like a refrigerator in white. And who wants to drive around in an old refrigerator? After two false starts with paint shops that were so inexpensive they went out of business before they got around to us, we finally had the car painted by J&W Autobody, in Great Barrington, Mass. The color is a stock Chrysler dark strawberry metallic, and the paint job is superb.

On the one hand, this fancy paint job cost more than the car. On the other hand, particularly when set off by the polished alloy wheels, new stainless wheel-opening moldings and clean white interior, the paint makes the car. After the car came back from the paint shop, my neighbors literally didn't recognize it. They thought it was some convertible they'd never seen before--one that was at least 10 years newer. Was the color change worth it? Aesthetically, you bet. Financially, maybe not so much.

Add it all up, and we've got just over $4000 in this LeBaron. If we waited for the right person to come along, we could probably sell it through the local Auto Trader for that much or a little bit more. If we'd painted it in our own shop, of course, we could have made $1500 on the project. But that's not the point. Our LeBaron is good to go for another 14 years, and honestly shouldn't need anything except normal maintenance.

Even with our splurge on a paint job, $4000 and a weekend of work is still a lot less than the $27,000 Chrysler is asking for the 1998 equivalent of our LeBaron. It may have seem far-fetched at the beginning, but our auto makeover on an unwanted old convertible makes perfect sense from every point of view. Sometimes, you really can make a zircon shine like a diamond. At least from 50/50.