Exactly, documented history on a car can be very valuable

Yes

Absolutely

Price out a decent quality paint job and you'll see why Patina has gotten acceptable and cool


EDIT
my 77k faded nicked and dinged original everything 79 TA

Attached File

I always thought Patina was fancy way of saying Dirt .

You should see some of the fakery with classic pre war cars, from stupid to quite clever

Its not cool on most things. Its an excuse for looking bad.

I bet. There a bunch of money involved with some of those so I can see it being a problem. I can only imagine the crap you hear at times. I had a self proclaimed expert come through and say a mustang here had a full frame off restoration and was completely original. Yeah I don't think so buddy.

You can buy just about any expert

Said car

Get the charging system fixed yet? Interesting having a vac gauge on the inner fender

Making a car look good can be done on a budget.  Doing your own bodywork/prep is a given, it's part of the building process.  I've seen plenty of driver-quality cars with a Maaco paint job that look good.  I've painted cars myself in my garage  for fun and cost savings.

A rusted out shitbox doesn't have patina.  Nothing wrong with that, but don't blow smoke up my ass and tell me it's worth money or adds value.

This is a different one

My mistake, mustangs look the same

Wait till OP find sout people pay a lot extra for relic'd guitars, made to look wore out. One large retailer says everyone complains about them, then buys one or that they outsell non relic'd ones by a large margin.

True

Nope, not at all.
It is indeed a shitbox van to 99.9% of the world.

Both of those other words are best defined as Trash and Sloppy Workmanship from people who should still be playing with Legos.

They are clown cars!

I kind of look at it as a counter-culture of sorts. Muscle cars and hot rodding as hobbies have been around for a long time and it's always been 10 coats of wax, polished this, chrome that, pinstripes and ghost flames, "CA/AZ car, no rust!!" on and on and on.

Do we really need more of that? How many more "cherry" 69 Camaro's/Chevelle's/GTO's etc with a bored out, over stroked, balanced and blueprinted, 4-bolt main with aluminum heads, blah blah blah fuckingwhocaresanymore's do you want to see? It just got stale after 30yrs. Another Summit catalog boomer spaceship on Cragar SS's with a Vietnam hat on the dash. Great.

I grew up in the upper Midwest surrounded by those guys. Everyone had a project car in the garage that they would tinker with all winter long, and 98% of them were what I described above. Time to do something else. Younger generations learned the hobby from their parents but are putting their own spin on it. It's the natural evolution of the hobby.

I think the rust and patina are cool because it's so much more natural to the image people want their car to project. Fat rear meats and exhaust dumps and supercharger whine, that all sounds badass and that guy's going to have your pink slip if you fuck around....... but the car looks like a pavement princess? No. What story does that car convey? "I sit in the garage and my Dad buffs and polishes and shines every square inch of me every single weekend, hehe." It's like doing the car's make-up.

Now ask the same question of the patina car. Answer? "I actually looked sharp in the late 60's. Since then I've been crashed into a swamp, dragged out with a tractor a month later, sat behind a barn for 12 years (had a 10x12 blue Montgomery Ward tarp for the first 2), had a family of raccoons living in the trunk (at least until the coyotes moved in), got hauled off to a junkyard where I sat for another 11 years, then some hipster douche guy with more money than sense decided he wanted to make a project out of me, so now I have a 12v Cummins out of an old tow truck with a 92mm Borg and my interior was made in the same factory by the same machines that made B-29's. Wanna race, faggot?". It tells a much better story.

Anyway, that's how I see it. They're 2 different categories: Rod's and Resto's. Can't stop it, might as well embrace it.

The other aspect of it is less fucks.
Who is more likely to thrash the shit out of their car on an autocross track, down a gravel road or on some backroad late at night?
Or take it on something like drag week, power tour etc?
The guy with the car with the $12,000 paintjob and $10k worth of replated brightwork or the one with the well worn finish and a few flaws?

Yes, there are people that are the exception. But most hotrodders are people working with a tight budget. They are either going to have an immaculate car that they take to shows and nowhere else or a car with flaws on it that they take out on the road and enjoy.

Saw a guy the other day in an original paint, mid 80’s Dodge pickup.

Straight, no rust. Faded paint, worn thru to metal in spots, but clean and rust free. True patina.

It was awesome.

When I had my NADA Station Wagen rebuilt, I very much kept the original paint and condition where it wouldn't compromise long term stability.

Steel (frame, bulkhead, supports and trim)  was re galv'd where needed, but the aluminum body panels were fine, not prone to rot so left original.

Attached File


Attached File


Attached File


More expensive to maintain the Patina but given the rarity figured it was a sound path.

If you do resto be cool to leave some previous use character

Nice, jealous

Beards,  IPAs and patina are all connected.

Agree 100% that budget is a huge part of it. When I was in high school, casually looking through Auto Traders and dreaming about hot rods, it was the mid 90's. Even by then, the "muscle car" market was running dry because the Boomers were hitting their stride professionally, making money and trying to relive the glory days. That combined with the finite and dwindling supply of muscle cars meant you were priced out of the market.

You weren't getting a big block Roadrunner with a decent body unless you brought it in from the southwest, and you weren't making decent body Roadrunner from the southwest money when you were a teenager working at a grocery store.

But you could settle for a clapped-out 86 El Camino SS with a shit body, a "cinderblock and blowtorch" lowering kit and an emissions exempt junkyard smallblock. A couple years wrenching on that thing without babying it and you didn't even care about a cherry GTO Judge anymore.

Not to say that those aren't cool in their own right, but this seems like the forced evolution of the hobby. People are making hot rods out of whatever they can find out of necessity like Mad Max and creating an entirely new genre along the way. Different branch of the same tree.

I'd gut the nasty upholstery, carpet, anything that smells like mouse piss, pressure wash the inside, redo the bench seats, and the rest of the money is going into the engine,  drivetrain and suspension.

It's a great truck

Attached File


Attached File



Lots of difficult detail work to refresh and improve but preserve where it warranted. I truly understand the difficulty and appreciated the efforts taken. I know you have an idea and get the feeling you do things in the same vein. I was lucky to have some great guidance on this one



Attached File


That absolutely stayed

I'd leave that dash as well, under the sw looks cool

Or you have drivers to use up and investments to hold.

And the "tropical depression" in the roof? I think it adds character, you'd have to leave it. I love the visor on that thing, too.

Bottle opener is handy but gets you looks

Motor and running gear affect performance.  The paintjob is strictly cosmetic, and a lot of people like the aged look.

Lot of muscle cars in the future will be put back to original drive trains, as far as value ,it is not wise to upgrade to modern drive trains on many old cars

Patina is bullshit.  I bought this shitty old luger some old veteran brought back from WW2 with some sort of hand made clear plastic grips that had pictures of some old lady inside them.  He had some crappy old papers with them too.  

I threw all that shit away, bought some reproduction grips and had it polished and chrome plated.  It sure is pretty now and doesn't have that bullshit patina.

Shooter is a lefty.

Here is a car with lots of "patina".

This car is one of only 2 427 S/C Cobras originally built in Hertz Gold.
I met Mr. Boosalis at Bob's Big Boy in Burbank Ca. with his Cobra.
It turns out that he sold one of my clients another 427 S/C Cobra.

I understand that it would probably lose value if it were restored to original condition but if it were mine that's what I would do.
I wouldn't mind an old pickup truck with patina but not this Cobra.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/driveon/2014/07/05/just-cool-cars-1965-cobra/12201245/\

Started off as counter culture to the Barret Jackson madness then became Barret Jackson madness.

I'm sure in some circumstances it makes sense to keep it as is. But it's current popularity started off from real car guys (not collectors) going back to the roots of hot rodding, assembling something driveable out of a pile of shoddy parts on the cheap.

Like all of Ralph Lauren’s Bugatti’s and Duesenberg’s that are nicer at 80-100yrs old than they ever were from the factory?

A pickup that got worked for decades earned it’s patina.  

On a car it’s dumb.  ETA: Except on a race car.