Restore or sell my 63 Impala?

Posted by Carl King - 12/02/08 at 08:02 pm

Here’s an email from a gentleman with a 63 Impala. Shopping for restoration shops makes you wonder what kind of work they do when you hear the prices…

Subject: I Saw Your Home Page

  I ran into your website after a search of restoring impalas in Google. I myself have a 1963 Hardtop impala and I’m really interested in restoring it. I plan on redoing everything, have the usual surface rust etc. I get quotes of 30k! I don’t believe it. How much should it cost me. Also if I spend the time to order every part myself.

 Thanks

 CC

 Hi CC,

The typical restoration cost is around $50k. It’s not unusual to talk to car owners at car shows who spend around $80k. A substantial portion of that is labor, so if they are quoting $30k you need to get a lot more information on what methods they are using and exactly what they will restore.

A “frame off” restoration is far more extensive than a cosmetic restoration. They may be quoting you on a cosmetic resto’. This likely means body work and paint, refinishing (refreshing) the trunk space, under the hood, Chrome, trim and glass, and interior.

For this price it’s doubtful they will replace many panels. They will likely patch your old ones. This is where the work quality can get ugly. Most body men do not do a good job of patching sheet metal and this too often leads to more rust a few years down the road.

I think you should get references, previous customers they have done full restorations for, and get a statement of work. Make any required payments in increments upon completion of predetermined benchmarks. If they ask for all the money up front, look somewhere else.

Just for reference; A good example of a cosmetic restoration is this 61 Impala. He didn’t strip the car down to the frame, but he didn’t need to, the car had very little rust.

http://home.earthlink.net/~61_impala/61_impala/

Carl

Hi CC,

How did you make out?

Do you mind if I post this email dialog on my blog? I’ll replace your name
with initials and remove your email address of course.

Carl
Carl:

I don’t mind at all. In fact I would appreciate it if you could provide me a link to your blog if you proceed to post this. In the event that I restore my impala I’ll be more than glad to provide you with a timeline and step-by-step procedure of how the restoration was carried out.

As far as where I stand with the decision on restoring my impala, I’m currently undecided.

Every so often I find an ad for a 1963 impala that’s been partially restored to the point where minor work is required. They usually run anywhere from $15-$17k

However, I had a chance to call several mechanics the I’m personally close to for quotes on work for different sections of my car. This is what I came up with:

To have the body and frame media blasted: $700

Complete Interior Restoration (Leather): $1200

Engine + Transmission: $2500-$3500 (Depending on size)

All this would come out to a total of $5400, and this covers the major work required to restore the car.

I would add an additional $5-$7k to finish up the rest of the car.

So I envision setting a $12-$15k maximum budget if this is all correct.

Now, I’m torn between purchasing a decently restored impala or putting in that same amount of purchasing one into my current clunker. Note that I can always sell my current impala for $5k and use that towards the purchase of another.

Thoughts?

Best,

-CC
Hi CC,

It’s always less costly in terms of both time and money to buy one thats already restored. The market value for a beautifully restored 60’s Impala is still only in the mid $20K range. Considering it cost a lot more to do a frame up restoration because of labor costs, that’s really a deal. Most restorers lose money when they sell a car.

Your numbers seem reasonable but I see a few gaps in the the list of things that need work, especially if the car has any rust at all. The sad part about rust, is if you see any on the exterior, it’s only the tip of the iceburg. Too many times I’ve seen a classic car with “just a bit of rust” come apart only to find it is just a couple years away from becoming a parts car because 90% of the rust is hidden inside chassis cavities.

You really need to take it apart to get the whole picture before you decide to restore it or sell it. You need to do a complete evaluation. The article I wrote on finding out if a car is restorable covers a lot of the discovery process that would help you with the evaluation. You’ll find it at http://www.classiccarauto.com/impala/articles/index.shtml . This should help you see what you are in for before you get started.

I would recommend you at least take the front fenders off to see what’s rusted behind them. The front end cleanup I did on my 64 Impala 4 door sport sedan cost me $200 in fasteners for the front end sheet metal and bumper alone. And that was a car that had very little rust. Once i took it apart, I realized the fasteners were beyond being re-used. I thought I was just going to do a sheet metal “refresh” job.

You should remove the interior and look for rust in the seams. If any rust is coming through the floor ANYWHERE, you need to find out where it is originating from. Most of the time it’s because the floor pan supports are full of rust promoting dirt. Pull off some of the undercoating from under the car near the floor pan supports and you may find metal so thin you can push a screwdriver through it.

I’ve talked to owners who have done a car for under $15k, but that was because they did the work on the car themselves.

No one likes to knowingly throw money away. Since you are aware of the differences in cost between buying restored or restoring before you jump into it you’ll be more comfortable with the decision. There are a lot of partial restoration projects circulating at a loss to the sellers because they didn’t realize it would take so much time and money before they got into it.

Find out just how good or bad your car is, and then you’ll have taken the mystery out of the decision making process.

Carl

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. The entry is tagged under restore 63 impala. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.