Back in the late-eighties, a friend of mine (who shall remain nameless, but plenty of you guys probably know him), bought a '72 GS350. He did a frame-on restoration but replaced the Buick Motor Division emblems with Stage 1 emblems and swapped out the 350/th350 for a built 455/th400 and put in a 3.42 posi. He basically built a nice Stage 1 clone. It was a good-looking and good performing car. One day he showed me something that he bought from a local junkyard. It was the VIN tag, trim tag AND title for a totaled and stripped '72 Stage 1. He was going to swap them onto his car. I moved to Alabama and lost touch with him so I never knew if he did it. He has since passed away so I can't ask him. So since some people say it is only those two plates that make a real Stage 1, if he had done it would his car had then been a legitimate NOM Stage 1? Something this car had never been before...
I did say it's just the two plates that makes a unique car (i.e. the only two parts you couldn't buy replacements for at the parts counter), but you're mis-characterizing my statements. I also said that IMHO, a legit re-body (i.e. a car that was so rotted/damaged as to require all the sheetmetal be replaced) would be stripping the car down to nothing, using the original (in this case BBB) frame or at least a replacement BBB frame. I don't think at that point it even much matters whether it's a Skylark or GS shell - It's a collection of sheetmetal parts welded together. All of the individual shell part #'s were the same for either. What this guy did sounds like a fraud to me - He simply put an engine/trans and the VIN/Data plates onto a GS that was originally a 350 car and called it a Stage 1. Might as well have just done it to a Skylark and saved the GS. Unfortunately, it was a fraud not too difficult to pass onto an unsuspecting buyer as simply an NOM Stage 1 however a simple check of the frame part # would suffice to start asking a lot more questions. Car is probably out there somewhere and some unsuspecting poor sap thinks he has a real Stage 1 car. I was close to buying a #'s matching '70 Stage 1 4-sp. several years ago. 1st big red flag was there was not the correct shifter hump present - Ok, there are explanations for that. 2nd was that that the pitting on the rear housing was not consistent w/the condition of the body/frame. 3rd was an interior color change. 4th was something about the bezel around the VIN just didn't look right. Well, just before I was supposed to fly out and look @ the car, someone checked the frame part # and it was for a 350 car. The owner was upfront enough to share that info w/me. The shell, IIRC, was a Flint built shell and the sheetmetal date codes were even close (probably got lucky). Orig. hood, engine, trans, rear, VIN, & data plate were all present. Idk what happened to the original frame/shell & the owner had bought it the way it was. Seemingly was either wrecked or rusted. If someone had been more careful/knowledgeable &/or less lazy, they could've done it correctly and I'd quite possibly own the car today. If done "well"/correctly & especially if the orig. shell had merely been rusted and they have used the original frame/shifter hump, I'd have been proud to own it too.
To answer this consider my Brother Sam, he took off his jeans and t shirt and cowboy boots and put on a dress and makeup and high heels and went and changed his name on his birth certificate to Samantha , does that make him a woman now and you would be ok dating him? ( I don’t have a brother, just a point to make)
You've made my point. Thx! Changing the birth certificate would be analogous to making a new/ fraudulent vin or data plate, lol.
Parts are parts to me. If there were two of that GSX, both restored, and one had every damn panel replaced with the goodmark parts and even NOS 1/4s and the other went through with a body swap with a rust free Az donor skylark, I'd have no difference in opinion of the two and would rather have the car with GM parts instead of being 98% repop sheetmetal. As a guy who just put a mile of mig wire through a car, it's almost a no brainer to me.
Meanwhile a restorer could take that rust free Skylark and spend 1000 plus hours dismantling the body attaching a very small section of the GSXs firewall and somehow that makes it "ok"
Here we go down the hypothetical highway right onto rebody road... Shockingly, rust free Skylark's have VIN numbers and titles too. On what planet is it required to remove and discard that VIN? That is a choice, and we already know the motive. Secondly, there obviously is more of this GSX left than a "very small section", yet the rebody crowd rears its head without hesitation and offers exaggeration as example. Many a restoration has brought back vehicles in very poor condition to a quality level beyond day one WITHOUT starting with a donor shell. That is restoration and a point of pride. 1,000 hours -time well spent in some circles! Lastly, and it should go without saying, if a shell is too far gone to restore it is no longer restorable. Let it R.I.P. Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust
"Without starting without a donor shell".. You can't honestly think that resurrecting a GSX in that condition using donor parts from say 10 or 3 different cars is any better than a rebody? Or ordering every single piece of available repop sheetmetal is cool? Gee whiz, who wants a car thats been pieced together by a dozen others? BUT it's "cool" as long as the firewall is original. At what point do you realize it's just metal? I get the concerns but there is much more to a car than the body, and i dont get why it's such a deal breaker. Would you buy an original body GSX if it had donor fenders, doors, interior, frame and a deck lid? Is the original shell the saving grace? Or is that hodge podge of parts kosher? Exaggeration? Please. That shell needs a full floor, inner and outer wheelhouses, a trunk pan, drop offs and window channel repair. It probably needs rocker work too. Whats left after that? The cowl is 50/50 along with the rockers. So yeah, carve the firewall and feel like a good samaritan.
A lot of "what if's" will always be asked. What if a GSX was driven off the dealer lot and was t-boned 10 minutes later? The repair shop replaced the 2 fenders, radiator support, hood, bumper, grill, both doors, partial trunk floor and what ever other parts it needed (most likely would have been totaled but lets keep playing). You get your "GSX" back 4 weeks later looking like new. Is it still a GSX? Now fast forward 50 years and you replace the same parts due to rust. What is the difference between the two time periods if it is still a GSX after the accident and not after the rust repair? As I mentioned in a previous post, I replaced the front fenders, doors rear quarters and partial trunk floor in my first GS and I never thought twice about it still being a GS. Had I transferred the usable parts to a clean Skylark it would not have been a GS. Fix this GSX anyway you like, just disclose all of the information to the next potential buyer and let them make the decision. Its as easy as that.
The fire wall and the “shell” are what the car is, everything else that bolts on from there is replaceable, all true Car enthusiasts recognize this as fact. That’s why a Real GSX is worth tens of thousands more than a clone in the same condition. What so hard to understand about this ?
I just bought it and picked up my Flint built, rot free Skylark back from Dano... Expect a very clean, numbers matching GSX in about 6 or so months... Whoops, I mean I am going to meticulously cut every inch of rotted metal out of that GSX and replace it with all of the clean metal from that Skylark...
It's a Freemont car, lol. Plus the roof structure has seemingly been compromised & it was originally a vinly top car. It will however, soon become a beautiful foundation (tailpanel/trunk floor/pass. floor/rockers/saddlebags & maybe rear wheelhouses) for transferring all of the salvageable parts (quarters/wheelhouses?/roof/all inner structure/dash/firewall) over to from my orig. 350 4-sp. shell. No repro parts and no re-body. But, I do have a very solid '70 factory bucket seat/vinly top/AC Flint built Skylark shell I'd sell you for re-doing this GSX. Personally, I'd cut it up & use the floors w/factory seat mounts, rear wheelhouses, rockers, saddlebags, & whatever else is necessary from it, along w/NOS quarters (quarters on the shell are are actually very nice but NOS would get rid of the emblem & top trim holes) & as much of the orig. GSX shell as poss. Again, no repro parts, no rebody. Of course I haven't seen this GSX but I'm assuming it needs pass floors. Otherwise, my NOS quarters and a couple of my rust-free rear inner/outer wheelhouses & rust free orig. filler panel & the trunk floor from my other rust free '70 Skylark (i.e. a rear clip) and patch up the orig. pass floor/shell as req. A couple people in this thread, in addition to myself, have mentioned the time/effort/expense of fixing (whatever that entails) an original shell and it may very well be that that aspect plays bigly into the legitimacy of a "car" retaining its original shell, whatever % of it that may be. I think many (myself included) do look @ a re-body as cheating although if done correctly it's still a lot of work.
