Restoration: Street, Show, or Race?

Chuck Blakeslee in his daily-driver MGB

So you’ve found a classic British car—an MGB or Triumph TR4, perhaps—in someone’s barn, or an old garage where it was parked many years ago. The rust is superficial, the body is in good shape, and all the parts are there. The price is good, in line with the price guide for “project cars.” This could be your dream car after you restore it. But restore it to do what?

What kind of a dream do you have for that classic car? What you do with it when it’s finished will make a major difference in what you’ll spend to restore it, and the process you’ll follow.

Three Key Questions

Let’s break down the possibilities into three categories.

• 1. Fun daily driver: Take the car on club tours and out to meet friends on a Saturday morning.
• 2. Show car: Draw admiring glances from concours d’elegance judges and other club members.
• 3. Race car: You’re sliding into the seat, pulling on your helmet, buckling the shoulder and lap belts, and heading onto the track in a vintage race.

In today’s classic car hobby, those are three different ends to the journey, and the forks in the road come pretty quickly. Once you’ve headed in one direction, it’s hard to change course and the cost differences are dramatic.

To illuminate the road map, we talked to Kent Prather, six-time SCCA national champion in MGAs and one of the most respected builders of racing MGs in the country. Then we spoke with Jim Perell, an organizer of concours events in the Sacramento area and the proud builder and owner of an MGB show car that’s been featured in several national magazines. Finally we asked our buddy Chuck Blakeslee, who owns an attractive MGB that he drives two or three days a week and takes on tours with local car buddies.

Prather reckons a nice MGB, or similar British roadster of the ’50s and ’60s, will cost $10,000 to $15,000 to take from “ran-when-parked” to a fun driver. If you want to show the car in judged events, plan on spending $25,000 to $40,000. And if you want to go racing, pony up $35,000 to $60,000.

Baby, You Can Drive Your Car

For a daily driver, plan a basic rebuild on the engine and transmission, and while the engine is out redo the brakes and shocks, replace the interior upholstery with a ready-made kit, and get a reasonable paint job at a local shop without dismantling the car and after doing the prep work yourself. If you’re lucky and don’t need pricey parts for the engine or any major bodywork, you should get by with $5,000 for mechanicals and $5,000 for paint and trim. Your money will be pretty safe. If you build a good driver, somebody else will appreciate that too.

However, if the car is going to be shown at local concours for a season or two before you start to drive and enjoy it, then take it down to the frame. Every part needs to be stripped, cleaned, refurbished, and refinished. It’s got to look better than original.

Since you’re putting serious money into the cosmetics, have a good engine shop do the engine. Jim Perell rebuilt his engine to exact original specs (called “blueprinting”), and went through the mechanicals. The cost sheets for his MGB show he has $17,000 into drivetrain, suspension, and electrics.

Paint and bodywork costs real money in a show car. Be very clear with your body shop about what you want and how much you can spend. It takes hours to smooth a surface so that it will reflect straight lines, and each hour can add $50 to $75 to the bill. Perell invested over $20,000 in his paint and bodywork. A good (but not great) job might have cost half that; on the other hand, if he had been after a “best-in-the-country” paint job, he could easily have spent another $10,000.

Why Concours is Costly

Interiors are another issue. Upholstery kits are fine for a driver, but on a show car the pleats have to be exactly equal and straight, the welts smooth, and the stitches exact. Perell spent over $8,000 having a correct-style interior custom-made for his MGB and a good top hand-fitted.

Then there’s the question of replacement parts. A lot of catalog stuff will fit fine and work dependably. But anyone who knows what the original part looks like can spot the difference in finish, shape, logo, or color between a new-old-stock (NOS) part and a reproduction.

Patience and the miracle of eBay can unearth good original parts, but always at a price more expensive than “repops.” Perrell figures he spent about $5,000 to find the right replacement trim and other cosmetic components. He’s got an MGB on which he’s spent over $50,000, but he’s won several shows, and feels he’s getting good value from his investment.

However, he will frankly admit it takes a real effort to drive it down to the ice cream parlor or park it on the street while running an errand. He can’t help thinking about all the effort he’s invested and how easy it would be to get a scratch or a dent.

Do You Want to Race—Or Win?

Perhaps you’d prefer hot laps to hot wax, and your idea of a parade is a pace lap, not Main Street. Maybe you’re dreaming of racing.

Here Kent Prather is very clear. Before you go down that road, be sure you’re going to enjoy racing, because a car prepared to be safe in current vintage racing—not only for the driver but for other drivers around him—is undriveable on the street. And it’s the most expensive alternative of the restoration options we are examining here.

Speed costs money; how fast do you want to go? You can install a roll bar, safety belts, catch tanks, and a fuel cell in your street car, replace the wheels with safe racing wheels and tires, and buy a suit, shoes, and helmet for about $3,000 to $5,000. That gets you into track schools, where you can drive at speed but can’t actually race.

But at this level of preparation, your car won’t be competitive, even though it might get through the technical and safety inspection. You won’t be as fast, nor will your car be as responsive and predictable, as your competition. You’ll be a moving chicane.

If you really want to race—even at the polite vintage level—you’ll strip the interior for weight and safety and install a racing seat for support. You’ll need to completely rebuild the engine and transmission with racing-quality components and replace the entire suspension with new or excellent original components.

And if you want to be competitive, you’re easily in Prather’s estimate of $35,000 to $60,000. At the lower price, you’ll be safe, have a car that will challenge your ability, and teach you to race. But if you want to be at the front of the grid, count on the top of the range. And the car will be noisy, uncomfortable, difficult to drive at low speeds, and probably illegal on the highway.