RESTORATION REALITIES

Fuzz Townshend explains why restorations take years, not months

To get a handle on the general estimated length of time it takes to restore a car, the main tasks may be split into blocks of hours. Perhaps you ought to take a seat. For example:

Q PREP’ AND PAINT 200 HOURS Q METALWORK REPAIR, FABRICATION AND FITTING 200-400 HOURS Q STRIP AND RE-BUILD 200-400 HOURS

Q ELECTRICAL 100 HOURS Q INTERIOR 100 HOURS

Q MECHANICAL WORK 200 HOURS Q GENERAL FETTLING OF OLD PARTS

FOR RE-USE 100 HOURS

Expect a minimum of 1100 hours of work being charged, but 1500 is not unusual. Expect more if the car is particularly special.

This means that even your best ever chum, who loves you and your car in equal measure, and is only charging you a tenner an hour, will be seeing £11-15k of your hard come-by cash, and by the way, this person doesn’t exist, at least not for long. If you want your project to stall with component parts disappearing ever distant, like a miniature ‘big bang’, this is how to do it.

Around about now, I expect that incredulity is creeping in. With restoration companies charging anything from £40 per hour upwards, it means that the absolute minimum price to expect to pay for a thorough job on a classic car is likely to be £44,000, plus parts and materials. Oh, and did anyone mention the VAT on that?

The time taken to restore any particular aspect of the car could easily quadruple if parts are rare and need to be fabricated, so get to know your vehicle type.

If the car’s value is greater than the restoration cost, then one can proceed slightly more boldly. If it is not, it is time to think very carefully about mitigating the expense or even ditching the whole idea altogether.