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Spinning My Tires   is one man's view of the world of cars. Random thoughts, ideas and comments pop up here, all of them related to owning, driving and restoring cars. I've been doing this car thing as long as I can remember, and have enjoyed a great many car-related experiences, some of which I hope to share with you here. And I always have an opinion one way or another. Enjoy.

E-mails are welcomed--if you have thoughts of your own to share, please send them.

Additional Spinning My Tires editorials can be found on the Archives page.

3/1/03

So how far am I willing to go, anyway?

I think anybody who has restored an old car has been to this crossroads before: how “perfect” am I going to make this thing?

Let me start with an anecdote that rings in my head every time I turn a bolt on my Buick during the process of restoration: When I was younger, we spent a lot of time with other people with old cars. One of the most memorable cars I can recall was a 1929 Packard 645 7-passenger phaeton. In mostly original condition, it was an absolutely wonderful tour car. It was a god-awful blue, with black fenders, orange wheels and a cream-colored door insert, with blue leather and a tan top, but there was no mistaking it. The owner would drive it everywhere, and load up the back seats with half a dozen kids and hammer down the road. We’d have our squirt guns, soda, food and whatever with us, and it just didn’t matter in that car. It was very nice, but not perfect, and it was a lot of fun to drive. I have nothing but fond memories of that car and the time spent in it with our friends.

 
A Packard very similar to our friends' car.

 But inevitably that car got tired and worn, so the owner decided to restore it. It had been patched and fixed as necessary over the years, but now it was time for a complete frame-off restoration. I even did some of the work on it myself when I was an apprentice for a well-regarded local restorer. And that Packard was perfect when it was done, beautiful in its fresh dark red and silver color combination. It won Pebble Beach and every other top award an old car could win. I mean, it was flawless.

And to me, the fun ended there.

The owner didn’t drive it any more, and it was usually trailered to car shows by somebody else, shown, trailered home, then locked back up in the garage under a cover. Eventually, it was sold for a loss (you do know that you can almost never recoup all the restoration costs of a car by selling it, right?), having never really been driven on the open road again. I don’t even think anybody even sat in the back seat after it was restored. It was just too valuable, too perfect, too much of an investment to risk it.

So that’s where we are now in this discussion. I have a 1941 Buick Century, a somewhat rare, desirable and road-worthy car. I’m doing a frame-off restoration. And I’m coming to a crossroads with my restoration. Before I go too much farther, I have to decide how far I want to go.

Bill Anderson, who wrote the excellent 1941 Buick Restoration Fact Book, and I have been in touch several times regarding my car and its restoration. After telling him that I planned on building a nice driver, he told me that he found it incongruous that I would do a frame-off restoration and not build a show-winner.

I’ll say up front that I’m no fan of trailer queens. They’re nice, but to me, the fun in this hobby is in the driving, which is part of why I chose a Buick Century coupe, certainly one of the most road-worthy of all pre-war cars. But Bill’s point keeps poking at me—it really wouldn’t be much more expensive or time-consuming to use authentic parts and materials on the car. I can still make the upgrades I want to (the powdercoated frame and suspension components for instance) without losing originality points, as long as the colors, textures and finishes are authentic.

Now my Buick isn't a Packard, and I don't have any illusions that it will be a $100,000 car when it's done (heck, it won't even be a $50,000 car). It isn't a full classic (though 90-Series Buicks are), and it will never be a highly-sought car in the way the great classics are. But within the Buick ranks, it's a pretty neat car, and, most of all, it is exactly what I wanted. And the whole plan was to drive the car when I was finished.

When I started, my reason for doing a frame-off restoration was so that I can have the peace of mind that I have fixed every possible problem so that nothing will get in the way of enjoying the car on the road. If I knew there was rust underneath or a decayed body mount, I wouldn't be satisfied. Taking this thought to the next level, perhaps I should go a few extra steps and do it perfectly from the start. I wanted an authentic car, but if the hose clamps weren’t original, so what? But now I’m thinking that maybe I should do it exactly right from the start. After all, I’ve got it apart anyway. Making it a show-winner won’t take much more money, time or effort. And after seeing Doug Seybold's beautiful cars, I'd be a fool to not want mine to be as breathtaking.

There’s always that risk of over-restoring the car, making it too nice to enjoy, and that’s almost always the case with a show-winner. How many prizes are enough? Will it ever be just a car to me if I know how hard I worked and how much I invested to make it exact? Will I be able to put it in harm’s way on the road knowing that it’s perfect? I don’t want to reduce the car to uselessness by making it as good as it can be.

I have long been an advocate of building your car the way you want—see the November issue of Spinning My Tires for my take on building rods from nice original cars if you want a complete analysis of my point of view. But I have never owned a show-winning car, and I will admit that taking a BCA Senior award at the Nationals would really be a thrill.

If the car’s a show-winner, it will be more valuable, too. A perfect car can command top dollar. But like I said above, I’ll wager that even top dollar would be less than I’ll spend restoring it.

I fantasize about driving my Century more than I fantasize about picking up a trophy with it. I dream about throwing my wife and a week’s worth of luggage in it and heading west to see the Grand Canyon or Mt. Rushmore. I think about driving it to work on nice days and taking the guys out to lunch in it. That, I suppose, should be my guiding principle: how will I use the car when it’s done?

I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’m going to make the restoration as authentic as I possibly can. When it comes time to make decisions that affect perfection, we’ll see how I feel. For instance, when I need tires, will I use radials or original-equipment bias-plys, knowing that there’s a deduction for the radials, but that they drive sooo much better. The plan for today is to do it as well as I possibly can, stick to the original script, and see where I end up. If there’s a trophy in it for me, then that’s wonderful. But I’ll probably drive the car home.

See you next month!

E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

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Last modified on 02/11/2005

Thanks, Fidget!