I once visited an interesting business, in Wayland, MA. This is a guy who restores classic Mercedes-benz cars. They do a total restoration: remove engine/transmission, snadbalst body, repar any rust, rebuild suspensing, repaint, and redo interior. by the time he is done, you have a new car. Obviously, this makes sense for a collectable car. But does it make sense for a regular car? Years ago, there was a similar operation in NJ-they rebuilt Volvos. Suipposedly, you could have a next-to-new car for about 1/2 the price of a new car, and you were dealing with a known quantity. Has anyone ever doen a big-time rebuild? Are you happy with it? And, do you really save money 9over junking the old car and buying new)?
You should see the work of Chip Foose. He is the Rembrandt of auto restoration.
In the same vein, check out these guys. They remanufacture old (1939-1962) Ford Farm tractors. They’ll sell a completely remanufactured Ford Jubilee (1953, about 30 PTO horsepower) for about $10k, which is less then an equivalent (2WD, 30 HP) tractor from the “Big 3” tractor manufacturers (John Deere, New Holland, Kubota).
As for whether you save money rebuilding a car… I’d be very interested in hearing if it’s possible to rebuild a modern car to “like-new” condition for less then the price of a new (unused) car. Even if you replace the engine, clean up all the rust, etc. there’s still a lot of expensive-to-replace, failure prone gadgets (power window components, power locks, dash-related stuff, etc.). Plus, aren’t modern cars made with materials that can’t always be restored? It’s not like you can sandplast a plastic dash or a fiberglass body panel, can you?
Not wanting to start an argument, Lib, but I don´t think Foose is what most people would call a restorer. That ´36 is a fantastic piece of work, but I doubt if there´s a single original part on it. Frame, suspension, electronics, engine, and so on are all new, and while they may have started with a steel body they could also have picked up a new fiberglass repro (http://www.cuttingedgecomposites.com/new_page_1.htm) for example, and anyway there isn´t a square inch that hasn´t been modified. Also the thing probably cost a quarter million bucks or so and isn´t really drivable- three inches of ground clearance, a twenty thousand dollar paint job, and no bumpers would make me a little nervous about driving to the supermarket, not to mention parking anywhere but inside a bank vault.
If you want restoration, try Alex Dearborn. ( http://www.dearbornauto.com/ ) He can take the rattiest old Mercedes around and make it better than new, and a lot of people would rather have a brand new 1966 300SEL or Porsche 356 than a new 500SL that every other lawyer or rap star drives.
Restoration is generally done to preserve the history of the vehicle. You want to keep the original engine, interior, and even the color if at all possible. You do a restoration on classic cars that people actually want to collect like the old muscle cars or the luxury models. Restoring a vehicle into something resembling its original condition can end up costing you more time and money then just purchasing a new vehicle.
On the other hand if you don’t give a rat’s patootie about original condition then you might be able to save a decent amount of money. On more then one occasion I’ve thought about purchasing a Mustang, ripping out the brakes, engine, and transmission and installing modern replacements. I’m still not sure how much cash I’d actually save though but if I could keep replacing the engine, brakes, and transmission as needed it would sure beat buying a new car every 5-8 years.
Marc
When my old maid aunt died I got her car.
It was about 10 years old and had very few miles.
I drove it awhile and then parked it.
When my son turned 16 and after a long preaching session ,from me, he became the principal driver of this old cherry chevy.
Wellafter all the preaching about being careful and take good care of it he managed to crunch 3 of the 4 quarter sections of the car.
So what to do?
No money to rebuild an old car. You soon find insurance companies don’t understand the word “cherry”
What I did was to go to a local junk yard and buy another car.
The parts car never left the junk yard. What I did was , with the owners permission, remove the parts I needed from several junk cars and installed them on the old chevy.
Well I never really finished the old car but thats one of the ways restoring a classic can be done.
The parts car cost me $300.00
In order to be economically viable, repair parts must be avaialble at non-astronmical prices. If huge numbers were made, then boneyards are a viable parts source. Alternativly, the manufacturer may continue to supply parts for decades (BMW motorcycles are an example) or enthusiasts or aftermarket can manufacture replacements…which requires that the vehicle attaine something of a cult following usually.
Parts supply problem solved, it can be EXTREAMLY economical to keep an old car on the road. On average, I spend in a YEARabout what one monthly payment on a new car would be repairing what breaks on my 19 yr old, 220,000 mile beater. I know the vehicle inside and out, and though it is EFI, it is still easy enough to understand and fix whatever goes wrong. This, too, is critical. After 2-3 too many experiences with “professional” mechanics creating more problems than they solved I finally gave up and no longer patronize them.
Lots of people tell me they have no time to work on thier own cars. I say that by the time I work long enough to pay the mechanic, lose work to pick-up, drop off, and wait for work to be finished after it was promised, I am time and money ahead.
It depends a lot on what kind of vehicle you rebuild, how far you go to rebuild it, and whether you do the work yourself or have to have someone else do it.
My father’s old 1973 F-100 pickup is currently sitting in the driveway awaiting a rebuild. Since I will do all the rebuilding myself, except for paint & body, I can probably make the engine, transmission, steering, suspension and interior like new for less than $5000. The body is in good shape, so the exterior will probably run me less than $1000. For this I can have a basically new full-size (not these modern small trucks), long-bed, 390CID, fully loaded pickup that will get about 15mpg and run on modern low-octane gas. Though it may not have all the modern crash-protection stuff made into it, it is still a far better truck than the newer ones. An modern equivalent pickup would run $25,000+ and drop in value as long as I owned it.
But if I had someone else do all the work, it would cost me several times that. It might still be cheaper than a new truck, but a new truck would have a factory warranty, a more efficient engine/drivetrain, and ride nicer.
If you pick a fairly popular and well liked old car to rebuild, you can come out ahead. A lot of older classic (and not so classic) cars can be rebuilt due to the availability of new reproduction parts. Even if the drivetrain is updated to new EFI engines and overdrive transmissions, most classics will retain their value or appreciate. New cars almost always lose money the second you drive them off the lot.
Rebuilding the basic engine, drivetrain, brakes, suspension and steering on an old car, and doing the bodywork and paint, doesn’t have to be overly expensive if you do what needs to be done and in moderation. If you have it stripped to the basic body and restored ground up and concours correct, it will end up being very expensive, even if you do it yourself.
A friend of mine needed a basic car to drive and picked up a nice little 1974 Dodge Dart with a 225CID six-cylinder engine, auto trans and air conditioning. The engine had a recent rebuild and the transmission was in good shape. He had the brakes and suspension freshened up and the front seat upholstered.
He has less than $1600 in it (including purchase cost) and it runs great. It only gets about 17mpg average, but it used low-octane gas. He can leave it in a parking lot and not worry about somebody wanting to steal the homely thing. Insurance is cheap. It does what he wants and it should give him good service for many years. It will never go up in value, but he has no more in it than the owner of a brand new $20,000 car lost the second he drove off the dealers lot. Unless you just have the money to spend, it makes sense to me.
Moderator’s Note: Driving this over to IMHO.
No, no argument. I can see why you’d say that. Sometimes, on his show, Overhauling, he’ll do all original parts, but ordinarily he likes to modernize, and mix and match. He doesn’t like door handles or side mirrors, for example. But he will use them when that’s what the owner wants.
Rebuild how? Straight from the original plans? With original parts? Or with modern solutions to some designs flaws the car was born with?
I ask because there’s a company in England that guts old E-Type Jaguars and completely rebuilds them and possibly a different company that takes old Jaguar coupes and saloons from the 1970s/80s and gives them modern engines and electrics. You get the nicer bodies, but better mechanical and electrical parts. If you’re going to spend that much money on a new Jag, I’d rather have the look of the old 
Does anybody know whether or not it would be worth rebuilding a 1965 Chrysler 300 (L? series). It’s basically a moot question because the car is in the possesion of my older brother and he’s not doing anything or letting anybody else have it, but it once belonged to our oldest brother, who died at the age of 24 in 1972. From '72 to ‘80 it sat at the end of my parents’ driveway. They decided to move, and were going to junk the car. I felt sentimental about it, and asked my then husband to take it, and restore it. To him this meant put on the road any way he could. To me, it being sentimental and all, it meant do it right. Original parts, or at least to original specs. Anyway, we had it a couple of years, did a little work to it, argued a lot about how it should be done. I then found out that my brother wasn’t speaking to me because I got the car. Apparently the fact that I was the only one who could be bothered to save it from the wrecker didn’t hold any water. I was the baby, I had known our oldest brother the least time (I was 7 at the time of his death), so I didn’t deserve to have it. Well, of course I gave him the car back. I wasn’t happy about what was happening to it, my ex wouldn’t listen to me, and I didn’t want to start any family shit. So now it sits in a rented garage, it has had no further work done to it, and it’s rotting slowly away. If in some hypothetical universe I could rescue it, would it be possible, and/or financially possible (for an average income, not somebody wealthy) to restore the Chrysler?
I found a classic car pricing site that says the car, in show condition, is worth $7800 fpr the 4 door and $9800 for the 2 door.
As with many such inquiries, it all depends …
Doing it to save money MAY be an option.
Doing it for the fun and experience is anothe.
Restoring an old classic could be profitable or not depending on the market, supply and demand, you know.
Just doing enough to get a damagd 87 Custom Buick Century roadworthy would likely cost far more that it would be worth. A good used car would probably be best in the long run.