Retro Pitfalls

Dodgey work by previous owners is one thing.  Most people who buy a used or classic car are aware that at some point in it’s life it will have been mistreated, the likelihood of stumbling across that shed find wonder is fairly slim.  Both my 1963 & 1973 Skyline, despite some time spent parked up 20 & 10 years respectively, were by no means immune.  With the ’73 being a more common car I did expect it to be a little thrashed and rotten, though perhaps not as much as it turned out.  The ’63 I didn’t expect as much wrong with it.  There is a bit of rott which considering it’s age is quite slim, but the real problems lie in weird additions of wiring by previous owners and quick bodges here and there.  However, as I said before these are things by previous owner’s and we come to expect them.  What we don’t and should never expect is bodge jobs by actual automotive shops or at least those that call themselves such.

If you follow the link further down in this post you can browse through almost 100 pages of what is a horrible and painful saga for the unfortunate purchaser of a Dukes Of Hazzard replica which cosmetically seemed fine, as such;

Looks pretty at a distance

However, shortly after the purchase from the chap who paid over $50,000USD ($90,600NZD) to have the car converted from a shell into a replica.  It soon became evident that it was unlikely any more than $5NZD had been spent on this car and it was just the most disgusting of horrible hack jobs to have become plainly evident (other than that Spanish Mitsubishi “tuner”, of course.) in recent years.

Here’s another few pictures but for the whole story you’ll have to read the thread on the dodgecharger.com forums.  You may think 100pages is a lot to read, you’d be right, you’d also be silly not to read it.  The sheer level of disgust registered at this so called automotive shop is off the scale.

Chassis Rails, like Blondie.

Don’t get the reference?  Well what would you do with a rotten chassis rail?  Run some fibre-glass over it?  ..no, I didn’t think so.  The shop involved did though.  It’s OK though, evidently chassis rails are not structural components of the car according to them, so it should be fine.

Missing steel? Rusted Edges?

With almost $100K NZD spent, you would expect to not see horrible patches like this anywhere on the car.  Though if the shop if to be believed, this was a cheap replica creation and not a restoration, as such, your large wad of money gets spent on everything except for the car in question.

The weird part about this story is that it’s not the initial chap who paid for all this work that is fuming.  It’s the guy who bought it off him.  A strange story perhaps,  but one that most definately needs to be shared.  You can read it all here;

http://www.dodgecharger.com/

Prepare to be shocked.

-Michael