Seeing this post gave me a feeling, and it wasn't necessarily a 100% good feeling:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-cars-sale/524657-1967-911-vintage-race-car.html
I don't own an old race car and I'm not in the market for one. But I am a big fan of the "original unrestored" car, especially race cars. To me the patina of races long past has a deep appeal that cannot be replicated by the shiny and the new.
The car in the link above was purchased in 1967 and campaigned by the original owner until 1973 when it was parked. It was rediscovered by collectors in 2003:
"Upon arrival to Klub Sport’s West Palm Beach shop, the Niederer car was carefully evaluated and found to have virtually no rust and no accidents. The car had ninety plus percent original paint and little or no body work to be done. It appeared to have had track side flares put on the rear fenders to accommodate a larger wheel and tire and one of the rocker panels had a bit of curbing. Other than those few areas the car was completely original. The odometer showed 34,000 miles."
Sounds great, right? Repair the curbed rockers and repair the small bits of rust, polish up the original paint and you have an original, remarkable "survivor" car with patina from the road race wars of 40 years ago. But that's not what they did:
"After carefully disassembling the car and putting the tub on a rotisserie, all the undercoating and sound deadening was hand scraped off. The car was then taken to a media blasting shop where the tub and all of the bolt on body panels were stripped to bare metal. The tub was then transported to Michaelian Restoration in Stuart Florida for its re-paint in Glasurit Sand Beige."
You can read the rest of the story yourself but the car is 100% refinished. It looks fantastic and probably drives better than it did in the '60s. The full resto also justifies the price tag of $165K. But I can't help thinking that something has been lost along the way.
So, any thoughts on survivors vs. restorations? Should a very nice original car have the originality restored out of it? Or is the point that a car that is 40-years-old and not track-worthy is now back on the racetrack?
Cheers
d.