The talented crew at Dave's shop turns out some of the best fabrication and design work out there... and for sure that kind of work does not come cheap. Coddington, Trepanier, Foose, Kindig and the rest, all regularly build cars for well heeled customers that are between 250 and 500 grand. I was told by someone who worked there that when Boyd had his TV show, they would turn away builds that were under 150K because "they didn't have time for the basic stuff". Some people just have more money than most of us can even imagine.
By the time I'm finished this Valiant, I'll have 40K in the car and that's doing everything except spraying the paint, by myself. And for me, even that 40K is a big stretch on the budget. But at the recent auction here in Scottsdale, I overheard two guys talking and one said, "I remember when spending 50K on a car was a lot of money. Now I'm spending 3 times that, and it seems way more affordable." I guess it's all a matter of how deep your pockets go. But I'll bet that at the end of the day, I will be more proud of my homebuilt 40K Valiant than that guy is of his 150K auction car.