RESTORaTION SHOP PRIZES AUTHENTICITY
Duo is better than almost anyone at returning classic muscle cars to like-new condition, adding same flaws the factory delivered them with
Jeff Cabot and Mauro Brocca’s restorations are not exactly the quickest. “If you want a car in and out, this isn’t the place to come,” says Cabot, proprietor of Cabot Enterprises, just outside of Hamilton, Ont. Despite the fact he doesn’t advertise, Cabot’s got a years-long client wait list, never mind the time the actual work takes. The shop’s labour isn’t the cheapest, either: a 1,000-hour restoration can clear the six-figure mark, and some of the cars they’ve done have taken 2,000 hours. But the thing that keeps their car-collector customers coming back is that they’re among the best at making classic American muscle cars look like they just rolled off the showroom floor — that is, kind of crummy. Cabot and Brocca specialize in doing “OE-spec” or “factory-correct restorations” where the goal is an exactly-as-good-as-new vehicle, not a shinier, better-than-new “candy” restoration. (Cabot does the paint and body while Brocca’s Performance Car Restorations handles assembly.) Countless shops can spray your 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A a mirror-smooth and eye-popping Panther Pink — Cabot used to do just that, in fact — but now he’s one of a few that will intentionally add a handful of blemishes, runs and paint drips just like the car would have had in 1970. “We’re taking it to a level the car’s worthy of. It has to be done that way, in my opinion, just because of what car it is,” explains Cabot, gesturing to his most recent project, a rare black-on-black 1971 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda. “A restoration isn’t just necessarily about making the car pretty. It’s putting it back to its original condition, even if that was after it came off an assembly line where a bunch of guys threw it together as their everyday job.” The flaws Cabot adds in the finish aren’t haphazard; they reflect the types of errors factory workers who built the cars would make, in the same places on the body. Figuring out what those were and where they go is the first step in an OE-correct resto. Cabot and Brocca have taken thousands of photos of “survivor” cars — unrestored, original-paint vehicles — to use as reference, and have interviewed the workers who staffed the lines in the 1960s and ’70s. If the car they’re working on hasn’t been restored before, the next step is to document its disassembly, so they can reverse-engineer how it came together. “You have to really do your homework,” says Cabot of the notes and photos he catalogues while tearing a car apart. “If you don’t, you’re throwing away valuable information you can’t retrieve any other way.” It’s during disassembly, too, that Cabot will look for artifacts of factory-line sloppiness, crosscomparing his records to break down flaws by things such as which facility the car was built in, or what day it was assembled. Next, he’ll source needed parts. Whenever possible, Cabot will patch in NOS body panels, or “new old stock,” essentially never-used manufacturer spares from the era. If it’s possible to instead use the sheet metal already on the car, Cabot will do that, spending dozens of hours smoothing out a bashed-in fender or massaging a trim panel to original shape. This, of course, requires incredible amounts of skill and patience. Cabot and Brocca picked both those things up after they turned their interest in classic cars as teenagers into side businesses, then full-time gigs. Cabot worked for 20 years in collision repair, before getting fed up and doing car restoration full time. “The drive to do serious restorations comes from within the person. It’s something that can’t be taught,” he says of his motivation. “You have to have that desire to be the best.” It also requires the proper tools. Cabot uses a series of rulers, levels, frames and jigs to ensure the car’s frames are completely square, the one thing that came right from the factory. Some of the equipment he built himself, such as the rotisseries he designed to minimize stress on both the vehicle and himself. “Being able to work comfortably and efficiently is important where you’re taking on every inch of a vehicle,” Cabot explains. “If you don’t have that comfort, you get fatigued, and that’s when the sloppiness starts. And once the sloppiness starts, it’s game over for a perfect restoration.” The last step after all this prep is the actual work done to the car. Cabot’s trick is to re-create a factory assembly line as accurately as possible in his workshop. That means using an authentic ’60s-era welding machine from a plant to join panels together, and shooting layers of lower-body primer so the car looks as if it went through the factory dip tank. The results of these efforts will be covered up and never seen on the finished car, but Cabot insists on every such accuracy. Cabot will put paint on the car like Chrysler did back in the day, too. For example, he’ll spray the driver’s side of the car while another painter, employee Ryan Shields, shoots the passenger side. The painted cars, along with their engines — Cabot had three like-new Dodge 440 V8s in the shop the day we swung by, all destined for ’69 Charger Daytonas — head to Brocca’s next, where he painstakingly puts all of the pieces together. After heading back to Cabot’s for a final prep and polish, most projects’ next stop is a high-end muscle car show. The black Hemi ’Cuda, for example, is destined for the Chrysler Nationals in Carlisle, Penn., in summer 2019, as well as the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago. As with the pair’s prior projects, it’s liable to snap up trophies at both events, and for good reason: while they may not be quick, and they may not be cheap, Cabot and Brocca consistently turn out some of the most factory-correct muscle car restorations out there, paint drips and all.