Musings: Restoration = Money loss! (ALWAYS)

If you are buying a car to restore, you'll never make money on it especially if you are doing it because you love cars. If you are buying a car as an investment, you have to have a totally different mindset. You need to look at every dime from a Return on Investment standpoint. I used to "flip" cars for years and can honestly say that out of the 50+ cars that I "restored" to flip, I only lost money on one - a 1966 Mustang Convertible. I invested way too much money in new parts (heck you could buy EVERYTHING for these things and CHEAP too) without paying attention to the actual market value of the done cars out there.

On your Duster for instance, if you were looking to "flip" it, you should not have paid more than $1000 for it. Why? Because no matter how much money you put into it, unless you put a 340 between the fenders, she'll never be worth more than $5K. Also, when looking at a car from an ROI standpoint, it's the little things that don't deliver "bang for the buck" that really kill you.

For instance:
New carpet - good investment.

New sill plates - bad investment, you should just clean up and paint the old ones with some dull aluminum spray paint.

Installing New Legendary Seat covers - Bad investment, cost is over $600 for front and rear sets, plus time/labor costs to install
Getting seats redone at you local trim shop - Good investment as they can frequently just fix what is bad on your seats.

Shiny New Cragar Rims - Bad investment. Cost over $150 each. Rims are a personal taste thing and a lot of people get fixated on the wheels and tires. Although the car may look great with those wheels and tires, potential buyers may not like them.

Used Rallye rims - good investment. You can frequently find them on CL or at swap meets for a couple of hundred bucks a set. This way you have a good looking set of wheels and the buyers can easily look past them if they are thinking about going aftermarket.

Whenever I was looking at a car from a "flipping" standpoint, before I even bought the car, I made a quick list of the costs to get the car up to snuff in order to resell it. For instance, two weeks ago I looked at a '69 Coronet that was on CL. The price was seemingly reasonable, $1800, so I thought maybe I can start flipping cars again. However, when I went to look at it, I realized it needed EVERYTHING. The body needed multiple panels replaced, the engine did not run, and the owner had no idea if the tranny was good nor even if the engine was good. Even if I could have gotten the car for less than $1000, it just was not worth it.

Here is a 71 Duster that I bought as a daily driver a few years back. I paid $1300 for it and drove it home. It had a few leaks and needed a little help with some wiring but those issues cost less than $50 to fix. I found a "new" front seat on CL for $100 that was perfect, the guy I bought it from had gotten it recovered and then later swapped to buckets seats. Got a new Legendary back seat cover on eBay for $100. I picked up a set of hubcaps on eBay for $25.00. I painted the car with "oops" paint from Finishmaster for $250. For the roof, I used some "leftover" PX9 black from a small project I did for a customer. All totalled, I had $2294.49 into the car (not including my time obviously). I drove and enjoyed the car for about 8 months, then I sold the car to somebody who DROVE IT HOME from TX to PA for $4500.