Crash Damaged Classic Porsche Gets Metal Makeover - Rust To Riches - Episode 6 - video Dailymotion

Ridiculous Rides

MEET the father-and-son car restorers who turn rust to riches by buying, selling and fixing some of rarest cars in the world. This week Lance's metalworking skills are being tested by a crash-damaged 1960s Porche which has been stripped back to bare metal by its owner. Merlin has taken on a 1984 Mercedes 380SL - and reveals the pros and cons of buying cars on the internet.

Transcript

00:00Master Craftsman Lance McCormack owns one of Britain's best classic car restoration

00:05businesses, Romance of Rust. Helping him manage it is his son Merlin, the cutting-edge salesman,

00:12who also runs his own classic car dealership. Together they turn Rust to riches. Lance is

00:19one of the country's leading metal work and restoration experts, and today he's working

00:24on a classic Porsche that's seen better days. This is a 61, 62 Porsche 356 Coupe. This one's

00:33in for a customer. I'm doing all the hard metal work for him. He's stripped it. I've got to

00:38put a new nose section on. These are so popular now and these have good value about them. This

00:43finishes about 80 or 90. If I were buying one of these, I would be inclined to buy a restoration

00:49project from California or Texas. That way you haven't got the rust that's got into its

00:54very soul. If you get a car from a dry state, the bodies then, my California car, we stripped

01:01it down and there's very little rust on it at all. There's some damage from racing, but

01:06it was a pleasure to work on then. This one has been through the wars. Now it's stripped

01:11to bare metal. It's showing signs of its history, warts and all. We've got traces of race history

01:18crashing. This is high here. This was too close so they've bashed it all back just to get

01:23it on the road quickly again, you know.

01:25It's the fitting of a new part that's revealed how far from the original shape the car has

01:30become.

01:31This is a replacement second-hand bonnet from California, so it's dry state, all the

01:36correct datums on it. But it shows now quite how bad the front was damaged. The other bonnet

01:42actually lined up so the bonnet was in the wrong shape completely. When I put this on,

01:48it will be in accordance with the data that's around here, the levels, the clearances, the

01:53fit and finish. These were campaigned. You can see, it's not just about the rust on it.

01:57This has had several bad accidents. I'll take care of all that. Once the front's off and

02:01I've made it weak, I'll use a hydraulic device to push this across before I even think about

02:07putting the new panel on. I'm certainly not going to put a £2,000 pressing on there in the

02:11wrong place. Given the chance with my hand and my eye and my history with these 356s, I know

02:16what they should look like. They certainly shouldn't look like that.

02:22While Lance contemplates his latest restoration challenge, Merlin has been expanding his stock

02:27of cars to sell.

02:28A week ago, I bought this. It's a 1984 Mercedes 380 SL of the R107 Mercedes chassis. It's a great

02:36little car. It runs fantastically.

02:39Although an advocate of using modern technology in his classic car business, Merlin is also

02:44aware of the pitfalls of the internet.

02:46I actually found this car on eBay. It had been up there a few times. To anyone who doesn't

02:52know any better, it's a presentable car. When I saw the car and pulled it apart, we both knew

02:58then why it hadn't sold. The danger of the internet is a lot of cars out there are bought blind.

03:04You really can't tell what a car's like without seeing it in the flesh. I have so many people

03:09coming to me telling me their car's worth so much and asking me to sell it for even more

03:13because they've bought it on the internet and therefore it must be worth more. It's nonsense.

03:17People need to get a grip and the reality of it is, unless you've seen a car in the flesh,

03:21you're taking a huge, huge risk.

03:23He was able to call on Lance's expertise and knowledge of these cars to predict exactly

03:28what might be wrong with this one.

03:30Dad said to me, he's done plenty of these. He knows where they're going to go. Lo and

03:35behold, we've done a bit more further investigation into this car and all the places he's predicted

03:39will have gone have gone.

03:41The rear arches are famous for rusting out on these 107s. These have been done to a fairly

03:46atrocious standard. I don't know if you can see down here the ripple effect we've got here

03:52and it hasn't helped. Somebody has scraped it as well. They need to be completely stripped

03:56back to bare metal and even probably new pattern arches fitted. What we do is we weld them

04:02in beneath the surface. They get a skimmer filler and a nice finish which will eradicate

04:07this ripple finish you see before you.

04:09So how exactly does Merlin intend to turn a profit from the beleaguered Mercedes?

04:14I picked the car up for what I think is fair. We're looking at spending about £2,500 on the

04:19paint. I'm then going to market the car at about £12,000. It's the complete wrong time

04:24a year to be selling a convertible as far as the public are concerned. What I tend to

04:28do first is offer it out to other people in the trade or my customers who I know might

04:32be interested. Beyond that it goes on to online marketing. There's plenty of classic car websites

04:37out there. What's more likely with this car is I'll send it to auction and see what she

04:41makes me.

Crash Damaged Classic Porsche Gets Metal Makeover - Rust To Riches - Episode 6

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