Body - Choice between Steel or Fibreglass

I had to go to Nelson for work this week so I took the chance while I was staying over night to go and see Steve at a place known as Rusty Acres on Tuesday evening. Its just 5 minutes out of town at a settlement called Hope and is quite well known to those in Hot Rod circles. Steve has collected up all these cars and a lot of oil company memorabilia. I guess it is all quite valuable stuff but only if you want it and only once restored. You can't help wondering how many if any of the cars will ever see the road again.

Well worth the look anyway and I was keen to see the Tudor he has been advertising on Trademe for a while.



You can see the tudor I have come to see at the front right of this next picture.


He definitely had some cool stuff there, including this old original stockcar. All of it is going to have to be sold apparently as he and his wife have separated and the property is being sold.



Anyway this is what I went to see, its an original 1930's steel Tudor body. Quite cool when you see an old car like this. The guys that built this will most likely be long dead yet the car lives on.... well sort of lives on. It was every bit as bad as I thought it would be. Not exactly what you'd call a good find. Its about as rough as they get before you bulldoze them into the ground.













As you can see its a bit rough round the edges..... actually its a bit rough in between as well..... no its probably worse that that.... it's fair to say it's farked! In this case I'm gonna have to say no I'm sorry.

I am still not going to right off the idea of steel but fibreglass is still really at the top of the list. There are several reasons why I'm not too keen on steel, namely, you need space to bring something like this back from the dead as it will require a lot of panel beating, welding and grinding. This brings me to the next major stumbling block. I am not a skilled panel beater or welder, so you have to pay someone. A body like this would cost about $30k to restore. On top of that, even when its finished its a steel car and I'd have to question.... do you ever really get rid of the rust? I suspect not.

On the other hand with fibreglass, you order it, they ship it, you bolt it on and you drive it. Okay not quite that simple but damn near.

Never say never though as steel is far more desirable from a resale value point of view and if a decent body turned up, perhaps it would be foolish to say no.