The Cost To Restore A Car

This depends on a lot of issues, most of which we can't determine without tearing your car apart, at this point we have already begun the work on your car, the cost to restore your car is a subjective thing, we have no idea what it will take to restore a car until we look in to it.

Is the car from an area that makes it rust heavily, if so what damage has rust caused to the car, do we need to replace most of the metal parts of the car, such as the floorboards, trunk floors, rocker panels, and inner wheel wells, well you get the idea.

Does it have excessive body damage, electrical damage, interior damage, or mechanical damage, all of these things weigh in to the cost of getting your car restored, most reputable shops will have a shop labor rate that is high, if you locate a $25.00 per hour shop beware of what might happen to your car.

You might think that this sounds unfair, but your paying for their knowledge, not for their time, most reputable shops have owners that have spent a lot of time learning how to restore cars, and they should get paid for their knowledge of your car.

This is not collision repair, it's nothing like it, we have no book to go off of to estimate the cost to restore your car, we have our knowledge of of your car, and the restoration of it, people often ask me if they can restore a car for less then it would cost to buy a fully restored one, the answer is no.

It will always cast more to restore a car then the blue book value of the car, so restoring them to resell, and make money off of is not the answer, you need to restore the car because it holds nostalgia for your, it brings back memories of the good old days.

There are just way to many factors to look at, factors that require us to begin work on the car to know what's going on with it, a car can have a lot of hidden surprises, things that you'll never see from just an outer inspection of the car, we need to get deeper then that to know about that car.

I know that to you this sounds like an excuse to get started on your car, but there really is no way for a restoration shop to know what's in store in the restoration of any car, it is 100% impossible to estimate the cost of restoring your car.

An average restoration can, and will take a lot of time to complete, even if the car is in excellent condition, it will take at least 1,000 hours to complete the restoration of your car, so let's take my shop for example, the shop labor rate is $75.00 PHR, this means at least $75,000 in just labor.

It does not include parts, or supplies, it does not include any custom work that you want done, nor does it include any high performance work that you want done, this just gives you an idea of why a shop would say that they don't estimate restoration work on any car.

If you want the car restored faster, all the shop can do is to put another tech on your job, and most shops won't do that for free, they'll charge shop labor rate for each employee that works on your car, so you should also keep this in mind when you want to push the speed.

This is not the first article that I have written on this, and I'm sure it won't be the last, I seem to keep getting the same questions, a professional restoration shop is not in business to rip you off, they are only charging what it costs them to do the work.

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