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Good Luck with your plans. I play around with old cars as a "free" hobby. I figure that even though I might not ever make money, I will usually not lose any money. Consider; a new mustang costs me aound $400 a month in payments for 5 years, after which it is worth 70% less than I paid for it. I picked up a 70 fastback for 1500, dropped around 4000 in it, and could most likely get $6000 if I sold it. (I will not sell it though, please see below) In the meantime, I had all the fun and challenge of playing around with it. Also, there is the fact that very few 70 fastbacks are actually tooling around. (my son drove it to school until the tickets piled up). Now what you are proposing is making profit on your restorations. It can be done, but mostly the big dollars are in the ultra rare collector cars. Things like hemi cars and such. Those buyers are going to pay you, drive it once a year for ice cream, and trailer it to a show. And they want to win that show. Not the type of cars the average guy can produce. I also HATE selling stuff. Most times the guys that show up are trying to rip you off so bad it is insane. The last time I tried to sell a car I gave up. Here is the car;
my 67 firebird convertible, drivable, inspected. Rebuilt 400, muncie 4-speed, excellent interior, power disc brakes and power steering. It had a bad paint job, (I did it myself and I am learning. no runs but lots of orange peel). The chrome was old and the rear quarters were not right. Someone had replaced them with Camaro 1/4's and welded in the louver section. Still, it needed NO rust repairs whatsoever. It also had tri-power that was not correct for the car. I put it in the paper for $$5500, figuring I could get$5000 easily. In the ad I wrote "not origonal". Still every caller asked if it was. When I said no, they hung up. I even had a guy who wanted the paint to be the factory paint. I did not sell it. Lets face it, this is a ragtop muscle car that will break your neck and leave you smiling. Kids have more in an entertainment system in a Ford Focus than I was asking for the entire car. While it might be great to make a living at it, I stick with it as a hobby. I am going to repaint the firebird now that I am a lot better at painting. I also am going to go with a 4-barrel ram-air set up. Some day when I am dead my kid will try to sell it and someone will be asking him if it is the factory paint.
Ken
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