MEET the father-and-son car restorers who turn rust to riches by buying, selling and fixing some of rarest cars in the world. This week Lance's metalworking skills are being tested by a crash-damaged 1960s Porche which has been stripped back to bare metal by its owner. Merlin has taken on a 1984 Mercedes 380SL - and reveals the pros and cons of buying cars on the internet.
Category
🚗
MotorTranscript
00:00010 Master craftsman Lance McCormack owns one
00:03of Britain's best classic car restoration businesses, Romance of Rust. Helping him manage
00:08it is his son Merlin, the cutting edge salesman, who also runs his own classic car dealership.
00:14Together they turn rust to riches.
00:17011 Lance is one of the country's leading metalwork
00:21and restoration experts, and today he's working on a classic Porsche that's seen better days.
00:27This is a 61, 62 Porsche 356 coupe. This one's in for a customer. I'm doing all the hard
00:36metalwork for him. He's stripped it. I've got to put a new nose section on. These are
00:40so popular now. These have good value about them. This finishes about 80 or 90. If I were
00:46buying one of these, I would be inclined to buy a restoration project from California
00:51or Texas. That way you haven't got the rust that's got into its very soul. If you get
00:55a car from a dry state, the bodies then, I mean my California car, we stripped it down
01:01and there's very little rust on it at all. There's some damage from racing, but it was
01:06a pleasure to work on then. Whereas this one has been through the wars. Now it's stripped
01:11to bare metal. It's showing signs of its history, warts and all. We've got traces of race history
01:18crashing. This is high here. This was too close, so they bashed it all back just to
01:23get it on the road quickly again. It's the fitting of a new part that's revealed how
01:27far from the original shape the car has become. This is a replacement second hand bonnet from
01:33California, so it's dry state. Got all the correct datums on it, but it shows now quite
01:39how bad the front was damaged. The other bonnet actually lined up, so the bonnet was in the
01:43wrong shape completely. When I put this on, it will be in accordance with the data that's
01:50around here. The levels, the clearances, the fit and finish. These were campaigned.
01:54You can see, it's not just about the rust on it. This has had several bad accidents.
01:59I'll take care of all that. Once the front's off and I've made it weak, I'll use a hydraulic
02:04device to push this across before I even think about putting a new panel on. I'm certainly
02:08not going to put a 2,000 pound pressing on there in the wrong place. Given the chance
02:12with my hand and my eye and my history with these 356s, I know what they should look like.
02:18They certainly should look like that.
02:22While Lance contemplates his latest restoration challenge, Merlin has been expanding his stock
02:27of cars to sell. A week ago, I bought this. It's a 1984 Mercedes 380 SL of the R107 Mercedes
02:36chassis. It's a great little car. It runs fantastically. Although an advocate of using
02:40modern technology in his classic car business, Merlin is also aware of the pitfalls of the
02:45internet.
02:46I actually found this car on eBay. It had been up there a few times. To anyone who doesn't
02:52know any better, it's a presentable car. When I saw the car and pulled it apart, we both
02:57knew then why it hadn't sold. The danger of the internet is a lot of cars out there are
03:03bought blind. You really can't tell what a car's like without seeing it in the flesh.
03:08I have so many people coming to me telling me their car's worth so much and asking me
03:12to sell it for even more because they've bought it on the internet and therefore it must be
03:15worth more. It's nonsense. People need to get a grip and the reality of it is unless
03:20you've seen the car in the flesh, you're taking a huge, huge risk.
03:23He was able to call on Lance's expertise and knowledge of these cars to predict exactly
03:28what might be wrong with this one.
03:31Dad said to me, he's done plenty of these. He knows where they're going to go. Lo and
03:35behold, we've done a bit more further investigation into this car and all the places he's predicted
03:39will have gone have gone. The rear arches are famous for rusting out on these 107s.
03:44These have been done to a fairly atrocious standard. I don't know if you can see down
03:49here the ripple effect we've got here and it hasn't helped. Somebody has scraped it
03:55as well. They need to be completely stripped back to bare metal and even probably new pattern
04:00arches fitted. What we do is we weld them in beneath the surface. They get a skimmer
04:04filler and a nice finish which will eradicate this ripple finish you see before you.
04:09So how exactly does Merlin intend to turn a profit from the beleaguered Mercedes?
04:14I picked the car up for what I think is fair. We're looking at spending about £2,500 on
04:19the paint. I'm then going to market the car at about £12,000. It's the complete wrong
04:24time of year to be selling a convertible as far as the public are concerned. What I tend
04:28to do first is offer it out to other people in the trade or my customers who I know might
04:32be interested. Beyond that it goes on to online marketing. There's plenty of classic car websites
04:37out there. What's more likely with this car is I'll send it to auction and see what she
04:41makes me.