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I think that if a car has
honest repairs , no matter how bad it was, it is restored. To me that means stripping it to bare metal and replacing the items that are needed, not taking the easy route and switching the cowl/tag, etc.
If a car is so rusted, burned, or wrecked to the point that no good metal is left it is junk and should be considered gone. To use the tag or cowl from a car like that and try to claim it as restored or re-bodied is a joke.
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WHO decides what an "honest repair" is?
If I assume you mean a restoration other than by rebody (if anyone can define when it takes place) then I guess it is safe to assume that you would be satisfied with a burned, rusted, damaged car that was repaired by a novice welding parts from 15 different cars togather in their garage?
You would not rather have one that all of the correct parts were simply transfered to a complete, undamaged factory built donor car just as the factory did to build that same car that is what the V.I.N. trim tag indicates?
Statements like this are often used for the rebody arguement. However, using this same LOGIC 99% of these old muscle cars "restored" (either by what some refer to as the conventional way OR rebody) in the last 10 years or more would never have taken place. When you figure that MOST of these cars were rusted, damaged, incomplete, to the point that when parked they were basially "totaled" in reality. When the values of these cars began to rise in value people started pulling cars out of junkyards, backyards, garages, fields, and barns.
People complain that a resurrected car by means of rebody is wrong, but some of those same people will say that it is restored if they take one of these rust buckets and bolt or weld on parts from SEVERAL other old donor cars or new repo parts. So, once again look at my other post above, WHO in the hobby DEFINES when a "restoration" ends and a "rebody" begins. Apparently EVERYBODY does and forms their own opinions.
Some say that it is done simply for profit. WHO is the mind reader in this case? How do they know what is in the mind of the person that owns the car.
Many people in the hobby currently own cars that were at one time considered totaled, or in other words worth less when restored than the cost to do so.
