Imagine if a show like Graveyard Carz existed for our Buicks...... A lot of questionable rebuilding going on during that show with "cars" that did not much more than a vin tag to start with. There would be a lot of brain hemorrhages going on with the Buick guys...
Interesting point. In Brian's hypothetical, the wrecked car should receive a salvage title if it was bought back from the insurance company as would seemingly all cars in that scenario although I've seen otherwise. I just don't know how you'd do that with "restorations" be it substantial sheetmetal work as you described or a complete re-body. As I've posted elsewhere, IMHO, a significant increase in value should accompany an original sheetmetal car in the same way that a numbers matching engine/trans would. The problem there is an engine/trans is either original or it's not. The sheetmetal comprises many, many parts so one would have to assess the % of original sheetmetal.
So to show you what we do here. A 36 inch tree fell across this car in storage. The car I used to fix this real one owner stage 1 was a build date of only 2 weeks apart from the original car. Plus it turns out that that donor was also a silver car. Was not expecting that till we took it apart. It was seamed thru every factory seam so that it can be looked at and not questioned first. But it makes the car even better. The original owner has since died and his son has the car now.
Cool pictures Mike. JW posted something similar that he had done some years ago and there were people that attacked it... Some of you are never going to get this. In one scenario VIN / trim tags "levitate", and in the other they don't. Additionally, as one V8 member suggested, you could well be saving the stamped VIN that can often be found near the heater box. When I restored my '69, we left the body color on the cowl in the original paint, because that was the only place it was left. It proves something to the next guy! Post #101 You going to tell BUQUICK he didn't restore this Chevelle???
I got a good one, I mean a good one. I just got back my 1970 Stage 1 on my 59th birthday. I traded it for a dragster 14 years ago & went through something similar here. The car is now branded as a 1971 skylark via the state of Virginia. I will tell the whole story on here at later time. The guy who got it from me, came on here running his mouth big time. And from the advice of my attorney I had to bite my tongue on here at the time. He sued me all the way to the supreme court and he lost big time.
Brian I asked a question that you did not answer . But keep stirring that pot. 40 years doing collision and restoration work ,I guess I could say I've about seen it all. I'll ask you did he(BUQUICK) restore the car or rebuild the car. What condition was the car in when he bought it? All states are different with there laws which is great. Just imagine if we had to use California laws as our example
Answered with Chevelle... You call it what you want sir. Your entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong you are Now, if you'll excuse me I have to cook up another reply
I didn't say what my opinion is so therefore I'm not wrong. Opinions are neither right or wrong as they are a person's personal feelings on something.
racebuicks, that was a hell of great job at saving a buick. i bet the bodyshop loved that job. lots and lots of labor costs! props to that shop for doing a great job. now is this considered a repair or rebody? not being a wise guy. not yet anyway charlie,
You guys are conflating differing issues here. The laws regarding VIN tag removal were written to fight car theft. Period. The key here is intent... As Mike said, the biggest issue with that Vette was not the tag attached incorrectly, it was the welded up and ground VIN number on the frame. That act shows intent to defraud. That's why that car is impounded. In a restoration setting, body tub replacement, body splicing and panel replacements are all exactly the same thing, as far as I am concerned. The intent is not to defraud, it's to provide the customer with the best finished product, for the best price we can do it based on the situation with each individual car. On the GSX we backhalved, I elected to separate it at the A pillar and door post, because the donor body was an AC car, and the X was a non AC.. I did not want to try and replace the firewall and all the ducting that is different. There was no intent to defraud, to this day you can open the trunk on that car and read the incorrect date codes on the filler panel. It was not because I was worried about the FBI breaking down the door of the shop if I took a drill to the VIN rivets. IN fact,we did that all the time, in a concours resto. We did not do half assed work, you take the VIN trim plate out of any of those cars, and they look exactly like the factory made them... the dash metal and tangs that the VIN is attached to was painted flat black, the tag itself is anodized. They look very different, if you know what your looking at. If you can't properly and carefully remove something as simple as the VIN and cowl tags, maybe you should not be working on the car in the first place. It's not rocket science. Since on the 68-72 cars, the VIN tag is riveted in from the bottom, you would really have to work hard to damage the plate.. you just drill the head off the rivet, and they slide right out. Once the tag is out, you carefully remove the rivet body from the tag.. I and my guys did it all the time. In the case of value, I would argue that any car being touted as having "born with sheetmetal" must be carefully inspected by the buyer, and all panel date codes verified throughout the car, as much as possible. A complete history of the car must be available, with a verifiable chain of ownership.. Because even the product in front of you is not foolproof, I heard a story secondhand that a very wealthy friend of some of my racing buddies, took 3 68 vettes and made one car out of it.. duplicated all the stampings, actually made the tools to do it.. really went the whole 9 yards on it. It was the rare big block 4 speed ragtop too.. Took it to the big vette show, and was awarded Bloomington Gold for it as a Survivor car or whatever they were calling it back then. He did not attempt to defraud anyone.. he did it to prove a point, and win a bet with his buddies.. and he eventually turned it into a drag race car, to eliminate any issues with future sales. This topic has been beat to death on this board over the years, and there are varying opinions. And they are just that, there is no "right" answer. JW
So what you're saying in a different way than I'd said in the GSX (& maybe this thread) is that the effort (to save whatever part of the original shell that can be) is really what counts here.
How much can a 455 BBB be modified before it isn't a Buick? How much of an original car can be replaced before it isn't the same car? Is it still a factory 440-six-pack if the only thing left of the original car is the VIN tag and a couple square feet of sheetmetal? https://moparconnectionmagazine.com...ds-graveyard-carz-1971-plymouth-phantom-cuda/ Schrödinger's cat may correlate here somehow...
Damm you guys sure love to beat up a dead horse! Between you guys and a moderator or 2 I can see why so many guys have left this place. Keith
And I will never understand that... how petty and immature do you have to be to "leave" an internet website. Maybe we are better off without them. Grow up.. understand that not everyone is going to agree with you, and that private message boards, just like life, have rules, and you have to follow them, if you want to participate. Or you end up on facebook, or in jail.. which many would argue are equally enjoyable.. JW
I don't see our number of members going down, in fact, it seems to be going ever higher. Who are the "many guys"?
