original vs restored

It depends on the condition of "original". Ok original paint or period paint as well as ok patina interior is good. But I see many cars today touted as original condition or "driver" condition that are quite a ways from that. Its like the term "barnfind" is being replaced with original condition driver. I would suggest doing what you want to do and enjoy the car. The market will dictate the value the day you decide to sell anyway.

 

At least when you restore a barn find you know what you have done. My first barn find which had a fantastic body fitting and door gaps ( for a GTB) ultimately needed a full restoration,,and will have one, almost completed. The next one, we will see, I am in favor of trying to preserve the acquired patina ( but not the dirt nor dust) but all depends of the amount of corrosion damages.

But again I looked at "restored" cars during the auctions and was horrified , much less than 5 % of the cars for sale are up to real concours standards . One Mercedes 190SL that fetched a record price at Monterrey had orange peel paint on the rear fender, means will require a full bare metal repaint to fix. And a Maserati Vignale spyder had massively uneven trunk hood gaps and doors protruding by a quarter of a inch on each lower side. Did not prevent to pass the half million mark!

Having had bad restoration experiences long time ago and being more recently class winner at Cartier concours at Goodwood and Second in class at Pebble , and racing cars at Le Mans and participating at MM and Tour Auto, I assume I and the workshops we are working with (which themselves can be credited of class wins at PB and Villa D'Este) have a good grasp of what quality restoration means both cosmetically and mechanically.

Unless I can buy a car that can show and prove the same quality of restoration, I would rather start from a project rather than from a poorly restored vehicle.

And I know I am not alone in this field, so this has nothing to do with the fetichism of barn find and unrestored sleeping beauties, it is a practical view that raw material is a better starting point than a partially messed up one.

Of course this has to come at a price that makes full restoration, if needed, economically sensible, at least in the long run, or the ability to keep it going without doing a gill body restoration.

 

Great post that sheds a lot of light on the attraction to barn finds.

 

Thanks for your comments. Will post some pictures when I have time and next to a computer to illustrate this. In meantime, I meant " full body restoration "...IPAD writes on its own sometimes!