The following aritcle was written for the Roamin’ Angels Monthly Newsletter.

This month I am going to touch on a subject that I have previously talked about; that is, the high cost of restorations. However, I am going to broaden the subject to include old cars generally. Of course, at the highest level, shops don’t want to do old cars because a shop can make more money doing new cars. Additionally, the owners are generally more picky about their project car than they are about their ’05 Escort that is in for collision work. If a shop does an old car, generally they want the same margins as a new car.

A friend of mine summarized it pretty well. He said, “From the customer perspective, it’s a lot of money for someone to pay you to do their old car. But from your perspective it’s not a lot of money given the amount of work you have to do to make it look good.” That’s a pretty good summary. Yes it’s a lot of money, but not really.

However, there are ways where the shop doing the work and your pocket book can be happy too. Buy the right car. Don’t buy a car that still won’t have a lot of value when you are done spending a lot of money on it, unless you don’t care. It’s actually not a relevant metric about the cars worth from the shop’s perspective; it’s the amount of labor you need to put into it. The best example of a car that won’t have value when you are done, but you don’t care, is a car that has been in the family for years. The car has sentimental value, not monetary value.

Buy the right car. You don’t want to buy a car with “issues”. We have seen cars that are rotting from the inside out and have even suggested that the owner give up on that particular car and get another one. A good car may be a “solid” car, which looks lousy, but is still structurally sound. If you have not bought a car on your own yet, then get help from somebody who knows what they are doing.

Buy the right car. If you don’t have a lot of money, buy a car that you can get parts for inexpensively and easily. For example, in my opinion, one of the easiest cars to redo is a 64-66 Mustang. Lots of parts and competition to sell the parts. This is a lot different than say a Packard.

Buy the right car. If you buy a car that is not over your head, you can do a little, or sometimes, a lot on the car yourself. Do-it-yourself can be a great way to go, if you have the time and the patience. We did a truck where the owner did all the work himself (over and over) in an eight-year period (see photo above). We only did body work on a couple of spots that he could not do. We painted the truck in pieces and just yesterday, a year+ after we completed it, he has the motor in it and running. This truck will be spectacular. I know this because he sent me a video.

So after you get the car, you need to find somebody to do it. For me as a shop, I need to do that too. Not only does the shop owner want to do these cars, but the body man working on them must want to do them. I just hired a guy that is about 40-45 who loves the old stuff and hot rods. We are going to put him exclusively on the old iron. (Who knows, maybe somebody will want to do some custom work. What a trip!) Some guys only want to do collision on new cars; other guys only want to spread bondo; other guys want to do a lot of cars and not work on one car for two, three or four weeks. It takes a special guy.

However, can you imagine the cost if my new guy works on a car for 3 weeks straight? So buy the right car.

Truck Restoration