The 1936 Lancia Astura Pinin Farina cabriolet awaiting restoration in Oregon. Photos by Brian Renhard, unless otherwise noted.
[Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series from Don Homuth that looks at what it takes to produce a Pebble Beach Best of Show winner. Look for part two to publish on Wednesday, followed by part three on Friday.]
At the annual concourse at Pebble Beach, the signs give the year, make and model of the car and the name of the owner.
Who did the work to get it there? How was it done? What was involved?
Before you get too far into this story, there are several things to understand:
- At this level of concourse competition, the term “Car Hobby” no longer applies in the same way it does to those who compete in small local shows, or even the larger regional shows. This is very serious stuff indeed.
- Those who can be involved in these sorts of open competitions are far removed from those who might spend years working on their own Chevrolet/Ford/Mopar product.
- It is a relatively small group. They know each other from past high-level competitions and they guard their secrets, like what cars they will enter in upcoming events, with a real passion.
- The immediate goal of most is to win a Best in Class at a major event. The idea of being awarded Best of Show is out there, but since there can be but one, it’s still a dream for most of them.
The 1936 Lancia that won Best In Show at Pebble Beach last August has been the subject of numerous write-ups in the automotive press around the world. The owner is always mentioned, but this story is not about him. The past provenance of the car (like how it was found in a Surrey garden or owned by Eric Clapton for a while) is usually given considerable mention. This one had been bodied by Pininfarina, was probably sold in England (the speedometer was in mph, not kph), but was abandoned and left to molder in a hedge until it was rediscovered and fished out in 1962. Pininfarina said that if it could be made to run, they would restore it at no charge.
Though tired, the Lancia was still an impressive automobile.
It was delivered to them, and the car was redone. Sort of. It then changed hands several times.
The current owner had been a vintage racer, but decided to become involved in high-level concourse competition. In particular, he wanted a car to enter at Pebble Beach. Being of Italian descent himself, he wanted an Italian car if at all possible. But it had to be something exceptional, preferably pre-WW2, and nothing so mundane as another Alfa Romeo or Maserati would do.
With the able assistance of an acquaintance knowledgeable in the availability of Italian cars, and with some experience at Pebble Beach, this Lancia was located and shipped to the United States. It needed something beyond a mere “restoration” as the term is generally used. It needed to be rebuilt – entirely – essentially as from new.
We know what the end result of that was.
What is not known widely is how that happened, how the car got to be redone to so high a restoration standard that it could compete, much less win the show outright, with an host of other equally well-done, equally rare, equally exotic automobiles. But while owners get to bask in considerable acclaim and publicity, the craftsmen who redid the car are seldom are mentioned, nor is the process truly understood.
Time to take the wrappers off some of that, if only a little, without giving away all the secrets of the trade that most car hobbyists never see.
For the initial part of this story, there are a few other points to be aware of:
- Those who perform this level of restoration have more than enough work to do. They are typically booked up for years in advance. They really are that good.
- They don’t need to advertise. The clients who want their services know how to find them through the network of informal contacts related to the concours circuit.
- By and large, they don’t want to be known all that well. They prefer to stay below the radar and typically work from unmarked shops with unlisted phone numbers. It isn’t likely they have a presence on social media, either.
- They will likely never be asked to re-do a postwar domestic vehicle, no matter how rare. The costs associated with a full restoration are simply too dear, and there are other shops that specialize in such work.
The story of this car began some six years ago….
The Lancia’s interior was presentable, but not correct.
Jeff McDonald is the chief coordinator of a team of restoration specialists. Each of them has his own independent business. None are his “employees” in the strict sense of the term, and I have taken to calling them the “cooperative collaborative” because that’s how they work together. As individual business owners, they do work on other cars – customs, hot rods, good repaints removed from high-level competitions.
Jeff is the key contact point for anyone wanting a car done to Pebble Beach standards.
His shop, located in an industrial area on the outskirts of a fast-growing city near Portland, is nondescript. There isn’t a single sign promoting a company name or phone number. The parking lot and access roads are gravel, with numerous water puddles after recent rains. It’s a three-bay shop, with office space, limited storage and a work area.
Photos of works in progress are not permitted. Customers don’t want to let anyone know what cars might be in the pipeline for future competitions.
Jeff began sending cars to Pebble Beach in 1987. First time out of the gate, the car he sent won Best In Class there, which is a nice way to establish one’s bona fides at this level. Since then, he has sent several other cars, sometimes more than one in a given year, and several of those have done the same thing.
The initial contacts with the Lancia’s owner were as much a matter of Jeff interviewing the owner as they were the owner interviewing Jeff. Yes – the car was worth having a long look at. But was the owner someone with whom Jeff wanted to work, given that it would cost a lot of money, involve uncertain timelines, and deal with numerous uncertainties common to high-level restoration? It took two interviews for Jeff to agree that, yes – this would be an interesting car to work with. He then advised that there was some time in the long-term schedule to fit the project in.
Jeff’s shop, in a discreet and unmarked steel building.
Jeff emphasizes that the car owners play a special and important role in this process. Somewhat surprisingly, it’s not primarily about the money. It’s more about their dedication and their patience to doing what must be done to put these historic cars right, and their willingness to go through the frustrations that always arise before the goal is achieved. Without such dedicated and passionate owners, many of these cars, some seemingly beyond salvation, would simply be lost to history.
Much of Jeff’s prior work was on his two favorite marques – Rolls-Royce and Bentley, and Jeff has a refreshingly objective take on both brands. Though he likes them and enjoys working on them, he chuckles about the “unnecessary” extra stuff that the firm(s) put on their cars. “A Mercedes-Benz might have one well-fabricated part to accomplish something, but Rolls would accomplish the same thing with a dozen parts or more.” (There’s a well-known sign on the shop door about how the parts that fall off this car are of the best English manufacture. A certain amount of irreverence probably helps to keep things sane.)
It also keeps the working atmosphere in the shop leavened with some considerable humor – a necessary thing when dealing with the roadblocks and sometimes extreme frustrations of dealing with cars whose parts are largely made of unobtainium, the exact specifications of which may or may not be known. Each of the team members make clear that when they get together to work on a car, they have fun together. A lot of fun together.
Most of the crew responsible for the Lancia’s restoration. From L to R – Rob Oberg, Brandon Oswald, Bryan Parker, Brian Renhard, Josh Nicoletto, and Jeff McDonald. Not pictured is Ken Dickman.
Jeff’s team involves seven specialists. Each member has some crossover skills to cover for the others.
Brian Renhard specializes in mechanical work from the chassis to the drivetrain. He’s the go-to guy to deal with frames, which are nearly always rusted and corroded somewhere, and puts those back into condition as though new. He oversees the engine work, though that is – as with the Lancia – occasionally farmed out to specialists. But when returned, if he isn’t satisfied with the appearance Brian re-does the entire thing again, just to ensure it’s right. Such was the case with the Lancia.
Ken Dickman does the interior work. In the case of the Lancia, that involved finding the correct texture and color of the leather, as well as fabricating interior panels from the remnants of the original ones. Small bits of original leather, reclaimed from beneath tacks on the wooden frame, were pieced together to form roughly a square inch of material. This was sent to a leather maker who supplied material as similar to the original as possible. Period photos of the car as new made it clear that though much was correct, the interior door panels were not as original. Lacking specific diagrams, Ken constructed all new interior panels using the period photos as his guide.
The seats were stripped to the frames, which had become rusty. Each component was refinished, new batting and burlap added, and then the exterior surfaces had to be crafted in a basket-weave leather, a painstaking process that required cutting and sewing individual strips of leather into each seat cover. Plaited passenger-assist pulls were made from the same leather, another exacting process that couldn’t be duplicated by machine. The completed interior was expensive, but as to how expensive, Ken prefers not to say. It doesn’t matter. The price of perfection just is what it is.
Brandon Oswald specializes in paint work – he describes himself as having a manic focus on wet-sanding and polishing. “I can’t think of all the time I’ve spent just polishing on cars.” It shows. (He did the paintwork on the Comet Caliente, mentioned in an earlier story, while working for Hot Rod Dreamworks. It’s a work of art.) Finishes must be mirror-smooth, even if they hadn’t been that good from the factory. It’s not that they are “over-restored” – it’s just what the Pebble Beach standards require. He also does much of the assembly coordination – though everyone participates.
Bryan Parker does sheet metal restoration with original parts, even if doing new ones would be less expensive. He did most of the chrome – not only the body trim but the exhaust tips and mufflers. The bumper details alone took months to get right. He had more hours in the car than anyone except Jeff.
Rob Oberg did much of the chrome restoration, spending a year sanding copper and repairing parts before they could be replated. He also repaired things like door handles, and rebuilt the running boards with original trim. Overall, he made sure things worked properly.
Josh Nickoletto is more than just a painter. A better term would be exterior restorer. When things had to be assembled, taken apart, redone and reassembled, it was all to his standard of perfection. Jeff credits Josh with producing the best paint and exterior the team has ever done on any car.
Jeff makes it clear – “On my own, I would never have been able to restore this car in ten years. Without the team, it would never have gone to Pebble Beach, much less won.”
Each team member is given the chance to discuss the car, but the final decision of whether or not to do it pretty much resides with Jeff. He has to both appreciate the car and approve of the owner.
Jeff has turned work down simply because the owners came on as too obstreperous or not sufficiently in line with his manner of working. “We had an engineer/project manager come in with a Rolls. His way of thinking involved spreadsheets, exact timelines for management of the project, and specific time and material cost estimates. He made it clear he expected them to be held to. I turned him down. That’s just not how these projects work.”
He is also not predisposed to work for someone whose objective is to flip the car for a quick profit. “Given two car owners, one of whom wants to show the car in good shows and keep it for some years, and one who is anxious to sell the car to someone else, I’ll go with the former every time. The other guys tend to cause a lot of wasted time trying to hurry things along. We don’t need the phone calls when there’s work to be done.”
As delivered to Oregon, the Lancia was not a concours contender.
Jeff visited the Lancia and owner twice in Phoenix before finally agreeing to undertake the project.
Choosing an Italian car was quite out of the ordinary for Jeff. Still, the challenge interested him. The actual work on the car structure and drivetrain was, as such things go, expected to be straightforward enough. But how to source the parts that should be there that weren’t? That’s a major part of the challenge, and for a one-off coachbuilt pre-WW2 car no easy thing. It eventually involved a worldwide search.
“We knew that this particular car was going to be perhaps one of the strongest entries we have ever had at Pebble Beach,” observes Jeff. “It’s unique, though there is another “sister” car that is similar, but not identical. We had a only a vague idea of how complicated it would become, but we were fully prepared to take on the project, no matter how long it might take.”
“We just never really expected it would take six years. And two of those were just in waiting for the side moldings to be done. Which, when we finally got it, wasn’t done properly.” (More about that later.)
All of this information is necessary just to appreciate the What and the Who of this project.
At the outset, there is no certain foreknowledge about any of this. But once accepted for restoration, the car needs to be torn down and evaluated. That’s where the real work begins.
from Hemmings Daily – News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/2fyNWCs
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