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I too was a victim of Esposito. This was in 2016 prior to John having medical issues. I did my due diligence and talked to 2 people that had their cars repainted/restored by Esposito and they were very positive. I have a SWB car and was pretty much sending him a rolling chassis that needed a little rust repair, some body repair and paint. I stripped the car to bare metal and Esposito even came to my house to take a look at it. He gave me a price and guaranteed that the car would be just like new when he was done. The sad part is I believed him.
I could tell he was in need of money because he even offered to pay to have my car flatbedded to his shop the next day because he wanted that first huge payment from me ASAP. Anyhow, things were going pretty good at first. I would come by every couple months (primarily when he needed money) to have a look. At the time, they must have been working on 30 other cars besides mine. John was always very friendly and personable. After a year or so he called me to tell me the car was done. I went over to check it out and I spotted areas that were just not done properly. I pointed those areas out and he said he would take care of it. In the meantime he wanted the final payment. I could tell he was hurting for money and I made a very stupid decision and paid him. ****WARNING, DO NOT MAKE YOUR FINAL PAYMENT UNTIL THE CAR IS DONE!!!!! Then John got sick and this is when his shop went to hell. I waited another 6 months before his daughter called me to tell me the car was done. When I went to look at it, nothing had been done to it since the last time I was there 6 months ago. She met me with her painter. I showed her the issues with the car. She couldn't see the problems and told me it was perfect and that she had 25 years experience in restoring Porsches. In the meantime her painter saw exactly what my complaints were told her he could fix them. About this time, things were starting to blow up on sites like Pelican talking about the shoddy work and work ethics coming out of his shop. At this point I just wanted to get the car out of there. It had been so long that they had the car, I began to lose interest in it because I was expecting a very high level restoration and that's not what I was seeing. The list of things that still needed to be done are long. I still need to get the car to another paint shop to fix their screw ups. I would imagine it will cost me an additional $5k to fix. Another thing they did was take parts off my car to use on other cars they were working on. Fortunately I took extensive photos of my car and could always refer to them when I would find parts missing. I ID'd all my parts like bumpers, fenders decklid etc. by writing my VIN and name on them. Even still, they used someone else's front bumper on my car as my car had the heavy weights in them from the factory and when I pulled the front bumper off about a year later, the weights were missing. The entire bottom of the car was also supposed to be part of the restoration and they did nothing. If I showed pictures of the bodywork that they missed, it would make you laugh, its so bad. Had John not have gotten sick I think this whole debacle could have been avoided. His daughter is absolutely clueless and she is running the show. I felt desperate to get my car out of there and I did.
I am not sure how they could still be in business with all the negative reviews, but I guess they are. If you value your car, find another shop to take it to.
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