rvich said:
I am curious, from the standpoint of doing a serious restoration (be it car or bike) is it considered better to represent the vehicle as it would look coming off the assembly line or as a well cared for survivor with graceful patina?
Russ
My boss at the corvette shop used to say: "if you are going to touch it at all, touch all of it".
People like shiny, even in patina'ed vehicles the more shiney and presentable it is the more money and interest it commands. People just don't like rusty junk, and wives and other forms of significant others who could care less about our passion for cars/bikes/airplanes/boats/old fishing lures/guns/or what have you will only see value in something that looks next to new.
I think the corvette restoration hobby really set the standard for patina vehicles when they created "survivor" car category and bench mark category. Forgive any inaccuracies because I am doing this from memory and haven't worked in that hobby in at least 15 years. To qualify as a survivor you start with a 100 point car and deduct for replacement parts, incorrect items, and restoration attempts over the year. This is not a cosmetic quality - the car can be 30 percent primer in spots over the original paint or have rust all over it, the weatherstriping could be crumbling but if it has the correct date code it doesn't lose points. Benchmark cars are cars (again regardless of condition) that come out as 95% or more original. These cars are used to judge other cars, esp the restored cars and even on things like factory overspray.
here is where it gets fun. When judging restored cars the closer you get to a factory benchmark overspray pattern, the more "correct" it is considered - even if that car did not actually have that same overspray pattern. We used to have templates (more than one for specific years) to hit all the spots with overspray in the same manner as the factory did in the same pattern.
I have always said that corvette people set the standard for vehicle restoration as a mental illness or a religion (depending on which you think is worse). A restored car isn't the one who is judged - it is really the restorer. You are awarded points if you do things EXACTLY as the factory did them, and if you pass muster you car is deemed as good as people remember them as being new (even if the nostalgic standard means the car is actually better than new). If you can do it better than GM to look like it came from GM then you are exalted to the alter of GM the god via a little plastic trophy and a high resale value on what is basically an unuseable car.
I once found a tall boy wedged into the frame of mid year stingray when taking it apart. It had obviously been shoved there by an assembly line worker and I joked to my boss and the car owner maybe I should restore the can and put it back. Neither of them laughed (my boss laughed later but at the time he wasn't sure which way the customer would go) and the car owner thought about it a second and said - "make sure it gets back there during reassembly".
This is the enviornment that I cut my teeth on in the automotive hobby, but it has an intrinsic and valuable lession. Money chases pretty. The difference in monetary value between a fresh out of the barn 1965 fuelie vette and a perfectly restored one is usually less than 5%. The restored car costs more to create, but is useable as a new car. The original unrestored car gathers more ooohs and ahs from that "type" but you have to use it gingerly because you might toss your date coded original and dry rotted delco fanbelt. Compare this to an unrestored car that looks like shit - the monetary value is gaping, usually over 50% difference in value.
A word on fauxtina: I like this new trend if you are really an artist. Too man schmucks try to do this now because it seems cheap (it actually isn't), but in reality if you are going to do it you have to go for the gusto. A ratty looking standard norton pulled from a barn isn't going to turn heads at all, esp if mechanically it is a new bike. However a lettered up ex racer with interesting (and sometimes homemade) parts that winks at the viewer and lets them in on the inside joke - well that is gold, and it is gold dipped in platnum if you can use it to fool all the cafe bandwagon 20 something douchebags that have flooded into the hobby recently and only care about how cool a bike looks.
don't confuse fauxtina with a bike that is built to a specific use and uses non standard materials because they are best suited for the job. If I built a real authentic desert sled and used bed liner on the frame, and made a ton of skid plates out of....ahem...salvaged road signs, and then proceded to ride the bike in the desert - then that isn't patina, that's character, which has its own value as well.
