The only things I can say, like it's relevant........Can't do it yourself=OK, Farm it out=OK, Gotts to pay to play=OK. The thing that grinds me bad is that you can be involved in the hobby= any car/style/culture, and at least participating........But DAMN! At least KNOW something about something! At least your DAMN car, or can explain what you paid to have done to it!!!!! How many time's i've asked Q's, only to hear a silent duh? My mechanic, IDK, I fell off the turnip truck last night and I did land on my head...........
The guys across the street had some cool rides. A '54 Chevy with power windows and a neat interior. A few blocks over there was a low '51 Mercury, flat black and pinstriped. That got me started. I learned how to read on old car magazines we had in the attic.
I am going back to just the first sentence of this thread. It amazes me how big some of these theft rings can actually get before they get busted. You think the size they get they are legit until you here them on the news and say wow, I brought parts from them not realizing that 100 acre junkyard 99% of the cars were actually stolen. Or you buy from a warehouse type business and find out years later they were the biggest thieves in your state.
Maybe I'm an idiot but when some guy from Europe does a 'buy it now" for a part & spends the crazy money for shipping & excise tax, I am rather humbled. If you toss in an old car magazine or some club newsletters to soften the sting, they are rather appreciative. Sure there are exceptions but most old car people really are the best!
I actually fall into the category of "used to build now buys". Between my job and family there was no time left for fabrication. So I bought a completed build that I could just maintain and enjoy driving. Hell half the time I'm ashamed when people ask about it cause I didn't do the work.
No reason to be ashamed. Heck, if I could afford outsourcing stuff, I’d have 3-4 on the road and be “enjoying the ride”.
I am no longer in the car business because of guys like the first one mentioned. Usually extremely talented, could sell ice to an Eskimo, but with an addiction, be it women, money, gambling, etc, that fuel their enterprise off the money of others , hoping for the big score at auction. Customers line up, because the work that comes out is good, and they. want it for themselves, and in many cases are trying to pay less by not going to a legit shop. Car guy or not is irrelevant in this situation. Money is the key. I have seen enough at auctions and buys to know there is a lot of money laundering, and have seen guns and death threats in this world. No thanks, I just wanted to see the cars, and I have, every one I ever dreamed of , and now dream of a few I didn't before. I will go to Monterey Car Week now. Same players, but I will be a spectator.
For those wanting to make it on their own, working on old cars and trucks for a living, I'll share my experience. Here locally, and it is rural SW Wyoming, there are enough boomer aged folk like me that like old cars and trucks, that I have been able to make enough to make it worthwhile, and have also been fortunate enough to do about 80 percent of that work in their garages, with their tools. I am not interested in drawing people in off the street, and I don't care to have a large shop with it's associated overhead. Let's just say, I would rather have the option of being choosy when it comes to customers, because there are a lot of nit picky bargain hunters out there, whose dollars aren't worth the aggravation, even on an hourly basis. Now that I've rattled on long enough that I've lost my train of thought, I'll say it can be done, especially if kept on a small basis. If you want to be the next Coddington or Buttera, that may be a little tougher to do. Don't burn any bridges, be ready to work, and don't be scared. It can be done, as long as you DO it. Oh yeah, be honest too.
Edited to seem less critical. Its sad to see folks take cars to some of these "reputable" shops only to get fleeced, mainly because these shops are so called "renowned" then spend a crap load for another copy of a copy of a copy, or get crapped on completely and out tons of money with no work done. Personally I do feel bad for the people this guy ripped off. How many times have we seen this behavior? More than we care to remember. There was a guy in Porter Tx last name Sisney, he ripped more folks off and they still went back to him. Like pulling out motors from 1 car to install in another customers car and put a junk motor in its place. If it was shady dealings it was done there. He got busted and last I heard was still behind bars but his son took over the business and started the foolery all over again under a different name on the door.
There's no phrase I hate more than "must be nice". Being successful is a lot like being pregnant, everyone say congratulations but nobody knows how many times you've been fucked. Everyone wants to have the reward, but nobody wants to make the sacrifice. Sure there are some people I can think of that have had the silver spoon in their mouth since birth. But the overwhelming majority of the wealthy people I know are self-made folks who worked hard, educated themselves in whatever, made smart decisions, and sacrificed short term gratification for long term reward. It really is a proven formula. These innocent people are victims of a crime. First off, let's do some simple math. Basic shop rate around my area is $125 an hour. $10,000 would then buy you 80 hours of work. $28,000 is 224 hours, or a bit over 5.5 weeks. If someone brought in a car for restoration that needed full floors, quarters, and paint and body work, do you think 1 person could get all that work done in basically a month and a half, with no materials or parts? Not a chance. So the notion that these people put too much money up and bear responsibility is nonsense. Additionally, I have to point out the irony of bashing these "non-car people " and dismissing them as Hawaiian shirt wearing fools. The HAMB, and the people on it, have exalted the likes of Barris, Winfield, the Alexander Bros, and more modern builders like Brian Bass, Cole Foster, Gary Howard, Cody Walls, and on and on. Aside from immense talent, what do all of these people have in common? They're business owners. They have overhead to keep a pro-operation running; employees to pay, a lease or mortgage on a legitimate work space, huge investments in tooling, health and liability insurance, expenses related to governmental compliance, and, a little profit for themselves. Where do these shops and builders derive their income? Well, the DISPOSABLE income of customers, without whom they go fucking broke, or at least would have to do something else to earn a living. So imagine the tone of this thread, especially with some members apparently working in the industry, bashing the very people from whom they make their livelihood, biting the hand that feeds them. It's easy to bash the victims here. They have money, fuck them. Instead, the vitriol should be directed at the scumbag thief who not only stole his client's money, but puts a stain on the automotive restoration community as a whole, and paints shops similarly situated in a poor light.
As I’m now in my 70s, I find more and more having to pay younger people to do work that would have been easy for me 20 years ago. I still do my own car work ‘cause I don’t have the disposable income to pay someone else to do it. The work still gets done, but at a lot slower pace. As long as these car guys are paying for the work, the legit builders will be able to keep their doors open. I feel bad for the people who lost parts and money to the scam artists…
You're totally right. I find it's also easy for people to assume that someone paying a shop to do work on their car "has money", but I've known several people who have lost money that they saved for years to be able to achieve their lifelong dream of getting the car done the way they wanted. Often these shop owners promise the moon and when the dust settles, the person sadly has nothing left, sometimes not even the car. It's not just people with disposable income, sometimes it is people who have worked for years to try to see their dream through who get shafted.
Ha ha sounds like me! I once bought a small but necessary part from your side of the pond. The seller was worried that the shipping was a bit too steep until he found out that UPS did a much cheaper fixed rate for a very much larger and heavier box. He made up the weight with old car magazines, parts catalogues and some random local publications, which I really enjoyed as we never get to see such things over here.
Here 'ya go. The 10k guy was on tv giving his story so there's no link for him. https://jalopnik.com/2-million-in-classic-cars-and-parts-found-after-texas-1850596166
I think there is a lot of truth to this. The folks with a bit more to spend are going to likely use shops that have a proven track record, but are likely priced out of the "entry level" market. For those without the same budget, they might fall prey to shops that will charge a cut rate to attract business, but then not be able to deliver. Unfortunately, the automotive restoration business has no sanctioning body or board that oversees the performance of people in the industry. If a client has an issue with the way an attorney handles a case, they have not only legal remedies, but also can lodge a complaint with the bar association or ethics committee. But if a body shop sticks a customer's car in the corner of the shop and doesn't touch it for 2 years despite getting paid for it, there isn't any real relief aside from civil remedies. And all you need to do is scroll through IG to see all these "shops", typically "(insert name) rod and custom", who post car they have allegedly built. Many I'm sure are totally legitimate businesses. But many are not and it's hard to tell the difference, even when you check references and are familiar with a shop's work. You can do a lot of due diligence and still get screwed.
Absolutely. As an Engineer in Canada I have a code of ethics and if I make a mistake or go rogue, a complaint can be made to my regulating body and they can strip me of my right to practice, fine me, or any number of punishments. Additionally, if I were ever to get charged criminally for something, my license to practice is automatically rescinded. As you said, not all industries work that way and unfortunately it means people using those services like body shops can be taken advantage of without much recourse. Unfortunately it can also be hard for those low-level body shops to live because they're not always working for people with big bank accounts. They might do $10K of work and then wait for months or years for the customer to pay their bill or find more money to pay for more work.
I will apologize in advance for the length of this post but there's no other way to tell this. There's another side to your statement. Some people get into the business of building cars without knowing much about business. They may know something about engines, or suspension, or body work or any of the other things necessary to build a car but they can't balance a checkbook. A case in point. A friend of mine, Jeff took his father's '26 Model T sedan to a well recommended shop just south of Chattanooga to have a street rod built. The shop owner, let's call him Billy Bob, had made a pretty good name for himself in this region drag racing in the '70s and with encouragement from some of his friends, he opened up a custom and hot rod shop. He immediately ran into a problem on his first job as he didn't have enough capital to buy parts and supplies, pay himself and support his family. He got an advance from the car owner and that helped, but it didn't give him enough to finish the car. He took a second job on, getting an advance from that car's owner but using the money to finish the first car. This went on for several years with Billy Bob taking in more and more work, getting advances from everyone and still falling behind on the work. When my friend Jeff found Billy Bob, he was impressed with the quality of the work. Not knowing how Billy Bob worked, Jeff advanced $20,000 with the promise that the car would be done in under a year. Two years later, the frame and body work weren't even started. The crate motor that was going in the car still hadn't been ordered. Jeff had paid for a lot of parts that Billy Bob said he had ordered, and Billy Bob actually had ordered the parts, but they were for other cars that had to be finished before Jeff's. Jeff and I worked together and about every week, we had a conversation about how much or little progress had been made on the Model T. Jeff was frustrated but didn't want to go into the shop and haul his car and whatever parts that were actually there to someone else. By the seventh year that the Model T had been in captivity, enough progress had been made that the car was painted and a roller but still no engine. In that seventh year, Billy Bob died with a shop full of cars, several paid for and all needing work. To her credit, Billy Bob's wife got in touch with everyone who had a vehicle in the shop and set separate appointments for all of them to come get their vehicles and parts. There were a couple of older employees that oversaw the removals and actually knew what parts went with what vehicles. Some, like Jeff, never got everything he had paid for, but he did save the car. The Model T is now in a reputable shop in Jeff's hometown in Kentucky and is finally being finished. If there is a point to my rambling, it is that the car owner must do his or her due diligence before deciding who is going to do the work.
There's a lot of those types of proprietors in an unregulated industry. Hopefully your friend gets to drive his T soon.
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