Another straggler followed me home!

gdrill said

Oh my.........


I happen to have friends who do concourse restos. Those are on cars that deserve such. Not every car out there needs or deserves that kind of work. Some cars will actually be used and driven. Most of the cars that get "those" jobs done on them stay in a garage and only go to shows.......if that.

Sorry, don't take this the wrong way. Your business isn't for everyone, in fact, it's for very few. A limited few. There are far more people on budgets than there are with money to burn. Those of us, actually like the fact that "we" built the car. Be it perfect or not. That is something 99% of your clients don't have a clue about.

Carry on, I like show cars too, I just don't have any use for one. I believe those are just money sunk that won't be recovered.

Click to expand...

And that's where you're missing the point. Most of our clients do shows yes but most of out clients are return business and I happen to know a lot of them are also just as enthusiastic about this sorta thing as you and I. They have numerous cars, they do drive them and sometimes they drive them hard. "We" built them is a statement many of my clients can say. We work with everyone. I won't go into our clientele but we have everyone from music people, business owners, to ma and pa who did everything that they could at home and are looking for help to finish. As I've said, we, as in my family, only work on American vehicles. It's what we know. I don't think we've ever done a concours restoration here. Now, the other shop my father retired from and who brought me on as a consultant is a whole other level of clientele. Yes, they are the .1% who can afford such luxuries, and they are luxuries, but we will never see those people in our shop. Most our builds are under 20k, we have a separate shop on grounds for our higher level stuff, we don't mix the two. We do enough business at both to sustain but it is highly skewed towards budget builds.

I just hate the sentiment that putting in quality time and money on body and paint is seen as luxury or for show cars only. Imagine if BMW started stating quality bodywork and paint is an added cost, a luxury cost.

Now, me, I love this homebrew ****. I love seeing people innovate and expand their learning. What I don't agree with is anti-sentiment against the time that goes into quality work.