Depending on what you’re planning to do with the car you are restoring, you need to have very different approach to the specific details of what is being done to the car.

The article below looks at it from the point of view of a Classic Cars Insurance appraiser and provides some solid advice.

Donnie Ward, 57, general manager partner at Martin Swanty Auto Center, Inc., in Kingman, appraises classic cars for insurance companies. Ward, who collects and restores classic cars and motorcycles himself, has been an appraiser for 20 years….

“I can’t believe people want you to appraise a car and tell you it’s either original or restored original but they changed the paint color. That’s probably one of the worst things you can do, no matter how ugly the paint was, to keep the car original, you need to keep it original,” Ward said.

“I have decoding books that tell me what color the interior’s supposed to be, what color the paint’s supposed to be, what color the trim’s supposed to be, (and in the case of Ford Mustangs) whether it’s supposed to have ponies in the seats or not ponies in the seats,” Ward said. People will restore Mustangs, “and they want the pony interior in it. Well, it didn’t come with a pony interior. It came with a standard interior. Believe it or not, even though it’s a higher-end interior, it devaluates the car. They’ve altered the originality of it,” he said.

People who want to restore classic cars need to know what they’re doing, Ward said….More at Knowledge, experience necessary for classic car appraisals – Mohave Valley News

It’s not difficult to see how some forethought and planning BEFORE you start to work on your treasured classic may have a significant impact at a time you want to sell it or even just for insurance purposes.

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