For reasons that have more to do with personality than pragmatism, I recently considered anew the possibility of restoring a classic car, or perhaps building a kit car. It’s an itch I’ve thought about scratching since the days when Popular Mechanics regularly featured ads for the Bradley GT, a kit car based on a VW chassis. The ads implied that I’d “made my mark” and thus should now “make (my) Bradley GT.” The pitch deeply resonated with me back in the mid-70s but had the opposite effect on my late dad, who reminded me that men who have made their mark don’t still live with their parents.
By the generally accepted chronological measure, at least, I’ve been a grown man for quite a while now. Which means that when a childhood dream like this one rears its ugly head again as it sporadically does, I do what responsible, mature men do, and Google something completely self-serving in the hopes that I’ll be rewarded with exactly the answer I’m hoping to receive. Specifically, “What does it take to restore a classic car or build a kit car?”
But when I did, apparently the digital Oracle of All Things was feeling out of sorts, and replied with this, among a slew of other results that were less than supportive. I’ll save you the time of reading the multitude of tales of woe, financial ruin, marital stress, hard men reduced to sobbing, et al, because they all boil down to this admonishment: if you’re not an experienced mechanic with the tools, skill, patience, garage space, and above all else, time, DON’T DO IT.