PRESERVE OR RESTORE

SHOULD a car’s age and wear and tear be preserved as part of the narrative or should a car be sent in for a full restoration until it looks better than the day it left the factory?

This is a never ending debate among classic car enthusiast.

You can propose this same question 10 years apart and you will probably get different answers, depending on current trends.

Just as Linux comes in different flavours, old car fans are just the same. There are those who believe that the car’s design and manufacture should be celebrated and this group will always want cars to be restored to how it would look on the day it left the factory or better.

I understand the motivation there are few things more satisfying than taking a tired old car and putting it through the restoration process and having a perfect example of the species at the end of the day.

There is an entire genre of videos on YouTube that’s dedicated to power washing. The urge to clean and make new again is strong in mankind; it is part of what has allowed us to have nice things that last a long time.

Then there are those who are fascinated by the story of the car, the life that it went though and they want to keep every dent and scratch on a classic car because each mark has a story and enriches the narrative of the car.

A good detective can probably write an entire autobiography of the car based on dents and scratches and workshop receipts and wouldn’t that be the perfect accompanying literature for a car?

Finally, there are those who just want to keep the spirit of the car while improving and customising everything else with new parts and the end result is about celebrating the individual who currently owns the vehicle.

Personally, I prefer to keep as much of the patina as possible and where there are damaged parts, repairs should be carried out only insomuch to ensure the car can be properly and safely operated and parts which have been replaced should be left new and obvious among the older bits and bobs.

If there a large rust hole then it should be repaired or at least the oxidation arrested.

I remember seeing a genuine gullwing SL with green plaid interior, indicating that it was a competition car and the previous owner had restored the car to new but had left the seats and place where the chassis and engine number was etched almost entirely untouched.

There were scuff marks on the seats and where the fabric had torn, they had tried to patch it up sympathetically.

I wish the bodywork had been kept in it’s original state but in this case, it was not possible as the car was involved in a competition accident and was rebuilt and then kept as a collector’s item.

At the same classic car dealer, there was also an Aston Martin DB5 in red. The car had come from California and restored to death. There was no trace of history as everything looked brand new.

To be fair, the DB5 had no competition history and no famous owners so I did not feel too bad about the full restoration.

While custom classic cars exist as a spiritual representation of the ideal, there are those who do what is called restomod where a car’s patina is faithfully maintained as much as possible while the mechanicals are ruthlessly ripped out and transplanted with modern versions.

Cars like these are interesting because the driver gets to see the history of the vehicle while being stuck in a massive traffic snarl and not worry about overheating. The air conditioning is also something that has become indispensable today so that is why restomod makes sense.

Today, with 3D printing technology moving fast forward, restoration will take on a new dimension as the end user can replicate any part they want if they can just come up with a scan of a good version or create and engineering drawing of the original part.

With such technology at our disposal the world of classic cars will become even more interesting as we see hard to maintain cars becoming more popular.

Three-dimensional printing will really come into its own when modern cars are restored as they contain far more moulded plastic parts that are dirt cheap to produce on a production line but nearly impossible to replicate for restoration.

Imagine the Toyota Unser becoming a classic and as you are restoring the vehicle, you find one rear air conditioning vent broken and two power window switches missing. The first thing you do is go on the Internet to see what is available.

Some people are now selling 3D drawing of things that can be used on 3D printers, others offer the printing service if you have the drawings, then there are those who may print these parts in small batches and wait for customers to come.

With modern cars, rust will become less of a problem so the bodywork may last a lot longer.

Since everyone tells us that plastic will outlive mother Earth, the parts that are not broken will stay unbroken but those which are damaged can be reprinted in hours, if not minutes.

My crystal ball says preservation will be the byword on the classic car community in the future as people become more interested in the story and the people participating in the life of the vehicle rather than the object itself.

Full factory restoration will still be the popular among those collecting rare or one-off cars where making it new again is the best way to preserve the uniqueness of the design and engineering which made it interesting, if not popular in its day.

Customising will also become more popular as classic car fans become less interested in preserving anyone else’s story and wants to focus on making the car part of their personality.