Classic Tails

TIPS, TRICKS AND NOSTALGIA FROM A LIFETIME IMMERSED IN OLD CARS

Andrew Everett bemoans the fate of classics that are over-restored.

IT’S A KIND OF CLASSIC CAR VANDALISM

I’d like to talk (or rant?) about car restoration this month, and how in my view it almost borders on vandalism. After all, if you see old pictures of furniture such as a vintage Chesterfield, do you see them restored to as-new condition? No. Does Shakespeare’s house look like the day it was built, every tile on the roof freshly minted? Of course not, and to do such a thing would cause an outcry because one you go down that road, what you have just restored isn’t old anymore.

So why do cars differ? I’ll give you an excellent example of why this concours infatuation is so wrong: the ex-Elvis Presley BMW 507. This was discovered a while back in the USA after The King had it shipped back in an already modified state – a different and more powerful 3.2 V8 and a colour change from white to red. When found, it was dusty and decrepit but still pretty solid although it was missing the lovely OHV all alloy V8 which had since been replaced by a General Motors V8, three speed auto and rear axle. The original BMW engine has never been found.

Now, the car needed a complete restoration as this was not just going to be a simple ‘fire it up, clean up and MoT’ job. The restoration by BMW in Munich took two years and it is the best restoration I have ever seen with panels carefully unstitched, chassis blasted and so on – the quality of the work really is outstanding. But the result is a brand new 507 in Chalk White, just as it left the factory before Elvis ever took the wheel. Every last piece of chrome and all the trim – all replaced and thus completely erasing this history of the world’s most famous 507.

I’m probably not alone in shaking my head in disbelief at this. I’m certainly not the only one who would have saved every last piece of usable trim and done my utmost to repair it. The steering wheel would be made useable with some coloured tape around the cracks, the window winders and door handles cleaned up with T Cut, the instruments given some elbow grease.

After all, this is the car in which Elvis took Priscilla out on dates, so why erase all that history? The steel wheels could have been rubbed down and given a coat of clear lacquer over the decrepitude, and the car given a reasonably good paint job in the same red as Elvis chose.

I’d stop short of retaining the Chevrolet small block, but the hotted up 3200 V8 doesn’t need all new nuts and bolts as the old ones are fine, and no vapour blasting the alloy castings please. Of course, under the skin it can be like new with the frame blasted and powder coated, new nuts and bolts, brakes, springs and the stuff that makes a car work and keeps it reliable, but on top and in the areas you can see, touch and smell, it has to retain a connection with the past if it is to have any kind of character.

In short, if I were to do this restoration it would look exactly as it did when it landed at the docks in the United States. It would get a good smothering of underbody wax blasted into it and it’d be taken out and used on a big road trip across the USA with Lisa Marie at the controls, chain smoking Marlboros and using it as a car should be used.

Sadly that’s not going to happen. Chassis number 70079 now has a glittering yet sterile career ahead of it sitting in a museum, shown off at various ghastly classic car events and occasionally driven very carefully by selected journalists. And I’m sure I won’t be one of them.

To me and countless others, the whole point of old cars is that they are old. The newness has long gone and in its place is history, several owners in the logbook and usability. What do you do with an ultra low mileage perfect concours car? Well, I know what I’d do with it and that involves a gallon of Dinitrol and a four figure mileage limit on the insurance policy. This is because cars are meant to be used. Who, upon taking delivery of a 507, an E Type or a 300SL Gullwing, squirrelled it away, polished the insides of the wheels, did a few miles a year and entered them into glorified polishing contests? Nobody, that’s who.

Old cars are about nostalgia, and that’s a great place to visit now and again. At the recent NEC classic car show, I spent the Friday wandering about looking at stuff and I found some of the most interesting cars this year on the various dealers stands. Ignoring for a moment the hairraising prices being asked (since when is a Mk1 Escort RS2000 worth 20 grand more than a Porsche 996 Turbo?) it is there that I found the car that I would have taken home. Not a 512BB or an early pre-HE XJ-S, but a beige 1968 Morris Mini 1000, the Hydrolastic Mk2 variety.

The Mk2 Mini was only made for two years so they’re already very rare, but this one just invited me to open the door to its red vinyl interior, and the smell of 50 year old BMC vinyl and felt carpets wafted out and took me back to my youth. Right there and then I could have jumped in, pulled the choke out halfway, flicked the centre start key and driven off. This is what BMW Classic failed to grasp with the Elvis 507. It’s not about how perfect you can make something old – with no reminders of its age, what’s the point?.