When is it not "Original" ?

[Rat_Pack]

Bob, same delimma here with my car. Pretty much unrestored has had one repaint over the original paint in 1982. The paint is starting to look rough on horizontal surfaces (lacquer paint) but still shines on the sides and in the jambs. Carpet is fading, a few cracks in the upholstery but otherwise nothing bad. Engine bay is very clean and underneath is clean but not detailed. I have owned this car for over two years and have done nothing to it except replace valve springs. I have every nut and bolt to completely do a frame off restoration but just cannot bring myself to do it. The car is almost too good to tear apart. Mine is exactly like Jim Pearse's 67 Nickey (see pictures of SCR 2001) in that it has a lot of character to it. I have only had it in public one time as a display item at our Camaro show and I never hung around it all day. I kept hearing all day "did you see that Camaro inside with the faded paint, it looks unrestored".

There is one drawback to doing a repaint on the car now: you will have to restore everything on the exterior including undercarriage and engine. No matter how good it looks now it will look worse once there is new paint on the car. All of the chrome will show signs of aging and will have to be replaced. A guy here locally bought a 69 Z-28 with 50k miles on it with supposedly original paint. Car was a very nice car needing detailing only. He decided to repaint the car as there were a couple of scratches in the paint. Well now the car looks good but the red paint went everywhere. Because he did not tear the car apart to paint it, the car actually looks worse now than it did before. His engine compartment looks like crap as does the undercarriage. This has made me decide to hold of on a repaint until I have time to tear it apart and do it right.

Bob enjoy your car as it is; because it has character. You can see completely restored cars all day long, not too many like yours left around to look at.............RatPack...............

[MadMike]

I'd say it's original.

Come on. If you kick up some tar on the road and get the underside of your car dirty - and you wash it - is it still original? You mighta washed some of the undercoating off!!!!! or even some inspection marks or identification tags (shock/horrors).

If the brakes wear out - you replace the pads. Is it original? Restored? Fixed? Ruined? Maintained?

So someone sprayed paint all over the inside of the engine bay. It's original and it's "messed up". So what. If you want, you can fix it. It's still original.

If you rebuild the engine or repaint the car, it's restored. IMO.