Restoration work differs slightly from hotrod building. In hot rodding, there is only one rule,” build it safe", the rest of the build is left strictly to the imagination. When a vehicle is restored back to original, the owner tries to put it back to the way it looked when it rolled off the assembly line, especially the visual parts. In restoration shops, we do our best to duplicate things like floor pans and alike but it's hard to replicate what a hundred ton press done in the factory. After all, in reality, the vehicle was only original once.

Restorers spend a lot more time than the factory did, putting the project together, and now we tend to "over" restore them. But that's not a bad thing. We're just trying to build them the way the factories wanted to.

The Buick convertible featured here needed extensive floor pan and body mount fabrication and there were not a lot of aftermarket parts available. There where actually two previous floors brazed over the original and it's going to be a timely and costly repair, so, having said that, let's fire up the torch and get to work!