We’ve been super busy down at The Shop. Here’s one of the classic restoration projects we completed this past summer but haven’t had a chance to share our photos of it until now. Hope you enjoy this sweet 1969 Chevy C20!
We finished this 1980 Corvette Stingray about a month ago and wanted to share some photos of the project. Although restoration projects are a lot of work, they are also a lot of fun. And they look totally sweet when they are done. We always work with our clients to help bring their thoughts and vision of their dream car to reality. This particular client started with a blue car with a silver interior. Now he has the car he has always wanted.
If you have any questions about how we can help you get the car of your dreams, give us a call.
Photos of the 1980 Corvette Stingray
This beautiful truck is a 1949 Studebaker 2R-5. Although 110,500 were made between 1949 and 1953 you just don’t see them very often especially in this great condition. This truck rewrote the book in almost every way. Leaving the factory it weighed a meager 2,840 lbs., 400 less than its rivals. That helped this truck get great gas milage even in today’s standards. This truck will do better than 22 mpg around town and even better with an optional overdrive exclusive to Studebaker in the truck world. But that did not make this truck a weakling; with a payload of 1,760 it trumped chevy by 640 lbs. This truck is powered by a 169.6 cu.in. flat head straight 6 pumping out 80 hp. Later models would be equipped with 102 hp. Here at The Shop we love these old trucks. They are simple to work on and beautiful to look at — they just don’t make them like they used to. If you have any questions about this project or how we can help with your classic truck restoration give us a call.
The shop welcomes a C3 (1968-1982) 1980 corvette. There were 40,614 corvettes made in 1980 and there are still a lot of them around. this car is the second C3 that we have worked on in the past few months. This project is a little more intense than the last.
We at The Shop are of a firm belief that there is a time and place for everything — a time to cherry-out restore and a time to leave it be; a time to upgrade and improve, and a time to restore the stock parts for another 50 years of life.
Every now and then we find a restoration we love and get ideas we can incorporate into our current projects. And then there are those cars we find and drool after and which totally change our lives…
This “Derelict” restomod by automotive expert Jonathan Ward of Los Angeles is one such project that we recently discovered and totally falls in line with what we (Chris and Lindsie) are looking at doing with our 1955 Buick. This clip is from Jay Leno’s Garage last summer. Ward married a 1952 DeSoto to a Chrysler Town & Country. Take a look:
Don’t you just love that patina? It’s just like our Buick. We’ve been thinking for a long time about just leaving it be — exterior, chrome, bumper, everything but upgrade everything you can’t see.
I’m not sure how quickly this concept will be adopted by the car restoration industry. The rat-rod experts out there are doing their part to help, but it’ll take a few years to gain steam. We found this evident in the last couple car shows we entered our Buick in. Yes – we entered her even though we had done almost no work to her at all. That wasn’t the point — we feel that classics are a piece of history and need to be seen, not parked.
The Buick gained acceptance at the annual Halloween Trunk or Treat at a local Boise drive in. The dry ice clouds pouring from the snout did a number on the small kids, but all the same, it was a load of fun. The condition of her exterior fit right in. We got lots of comments and laughs.
But a real-live car show? That was another story.
The 2012 Northwest Motorfest was the real deal — a juried show and we were one of few of the ’50s era Buicks that attended. None had the patina like ours, though. We got a lot of comments: some encouraging, some discouraging. Everything from “Oh, my mom had one of these and I remember riding in it as a kid….” to “you’ve got a lot of work head of you.” Some people couldn’t believe why we entered. Others were glad to see something not perfect. All in all, though, it was good to spread the message of the value of imperfect, classic, daily drivers.
Maybe one day it will be totally cherried out — most likely it’ll be rebuilt on the inside but will be a total surprise to everyone else. Either way, it’s going to get its time in the sun. That patina still has more aging to do!
The Shop is getting ready to start on our first project — a 1956 Ford Fairlane. It’s a 2-door hardtop coupe and will need work inside and out. It currently does not run, and the fun is bout to begin as Chris and John start to dig in to the engine bay. Once it is up and running, the exterior and interior will be up next.
Stay tuned for updates!