What's with auto body people? . . . .

1967DartGT said

I've been told by a couple of auto body shops that they don't even bother with restorations and rust repair jobs becasue they can make more money in a short time by just doing insurance claims and crash repair. The shops that said they would work on my car would not give an estimate and said that they would just charge materials and an hourly shop rate. Hard to budget for this. Probably not worth dealing with these shops anyway ... if they don't regularly do restorations they probably wouldn't live up to most of our standards.

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All of the collision shops I've worked for wouldn't get into something this big on an antique. Quarters, maybe, but anything structural, no. Not enough money in it. That's the main reason they shy away from it. The insurance work pays big for the amount of time it takes and it's guaranteed money. In the time it would take to do a private pay job like this one or two collision jobs have to be put on the back burner or are lost to others shops. And for those shops who do get into "restorations" you're right. The standards aren't there. Bondo is cheap and it's just an old car, so give a quick paint job, I didn't charge the guy very much, I've been told at a few of the lesser shops I've worked for.