WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
FIND SOMEONE YOU TRUST
Trust is one of the most important things to find in a restorer – so if there is someone you already know and trust, or you have good testimony about from a reliable contact, start there. If that’s not the case, do your homework on the firms you are considering, check out their websites and read reviews on both TrustPilot and Google. But take them with a pinch of salt because the odd negative review is inevitable, and you haven’t heard the restorer’s side of it.
Assuming that things are largely positive from afar, visit the workshop and be sure that the standard of work you are seeing being done is what you want for your car. TRGB owner, Gary Bates, says: ‘COVID precautions aside, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to look around their workshop.’
SPECIALIST OR GENERALIST?
If there is a specialist in your model nearby, they should be your first port of call. However, that won’t be the case for most of us, and you should only consider sending your car to the other side of the country if no-one else is capable of working on it. Regularly checking on a project is a good habit and much harder if it is 200 miles away. If you are getting good signals from a restorer, either a generalist or a specialist in a completely different car, just talk to them and find out if they do have applicable experience.
Melvyn Rutter says: ‘We are currently working on an E-type, whereas as 99 per cent of what we do is Morgans. The customer is very local, just down the road from us, and that does make a difference. It’s also just about going with who you trust. I’ve been in business for 45 years and have built a good reputation – reputations take a long time to build up but can vanish in just five minutes.’
IS THE PRICE RIGHT?
Going with a cheaper option is always tempting, and there is value in shopping around, but be sure that you aren’t comparing apples with oranges. PC's Matt Tomkins says: ‘Drill down into exactly what is being done. Are you looking for your car to be perfect or just to get it through an MoT because there is a hole in the floor? You need to be extremely clear on what standard of work is being offered.’
You should also be aware that a restorer may be giving a best-case estimate, and this could be wildly different from what the actual cost could eventually be. Probe them on what could potentially go wrong, and what that could cost, and then add on some more money for the unpredictable. Melvyn Rutter says: ‘ The Jaguar we are working on now had bolts seized into the cylinder head like you wouldn’t believe, and it took us a total of three days just to remove them – you often just don’t see stuff like that coming at you.’