Original vs Correct,, New Body Acceptable?

[70 copo]

If the position is taken that if it is "dead then bury it" then ANY repair that would render the vehicle inoperable could be considered non repairable. You guys with re- stamped blocks, trannys, and rears... You know who you are!

The rebody issue is simply the extreme of saving the remaining cars that are out there. How are one of these cars properly saved? NOS GM sheet metal? How many parts can be replaced before the car should die? one floor? two floors? one quarter panel? both? One of the ZL-1's that were restored over a decade ago had almost all of the sheet metal removed excluding the driveshaft tunnel. The point that I am making here is that after reading this string of posts this topic is clearly about "rarety and not getting ripped off". It seems that those of us with the nice cars are perhaps overly concerned with maintaining market value. There are extremes on both sides of this opinion.

Many of the fighter aircraft recovered after WW2 currently on display were put together from several different planes- yet when assembled they clearly represent a completed example of that type of aircraft. Again-rarity is the issue here. Rarity drives the desireability of an item higher. If the desireability is high (and this web site clearly drives that) - the remaining material that is out there will be built up into functional equipment. Those of us with these cars begin this process by paying big dollars for desireable cars, which drives the remaining junk values in to the range where it becomes viable to do a "rebody". As long as the price is high, desireability is high, we will have the major component replacement issue. Interiors, Blocks, entire drive trains, major sections of the body sheetmetal - or entire bodys from the firewall back. Bottom line buyer beware- know what you are buying and be happy with it! [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]