Expected restoration costs

[72targa]

Would love to see some pics of the car as it stands. Good luck with your endeavor!

[dwa911]

Wow. I wish I could restore a car for those numbers. It had better be no metal work, no paint or no drivetrain work.
It makes me sad when I see restoration work done by folks with awesome talent driving around in a beat up pickup trucks, living in a tiny apartment so some guy can have a restored car on the cheap. These folks have spent a lifetime developing their talent. Good original parts before restoration cost 3 to 4 times what I paid 10 years ago. I've spent 20 hours calling all my sources, and online looking for a $300 to $400 part. How do I bill a guy $50 to $100.00 an hour for that. That's just one part. Overhead has to be paid. When I talk to guys like Jerry Woods, Dave DiMaria of Vintage Car Works, Steve Rowe of Rowe Performance, and others, they need $150.00 ish plus an hour to cover costs and have a little left over to pay Uncle Sam and take a few bucks home.
I would double all these numbers a least. Every good restoration shop I know is backlogged 2 to 3 years with Baby Boomers panicked to get their car done while they can still get in it. For me those numbers are like the cars are being done in the Eastern Block or Mexico. For an every nut and bolt restoration it takes 2 to 3,000 hours. I'm watching 1964 #232 being done. They'll have 5 to 7000 hours just in metal work. It should be clear coated and put in the Porsche museum. Every spot weld was measured for placement and put exactly in the same spot. Kinda over the top but it's an over the top car. I guess my perspective is a bit skewed.

I think Chris is spot on...

My last restoration - 2018-2023 to take a 1971 911T and make a very close representation of a 1973 RSR with RSR brakes, RSR trailing arms, 3.0 high butterfly MFI, etc... not a perfect recreation, that wasn't the intent, but close enough... In fact the extras I wanted added to the cost... touring interior, and electric AC... It took 5 years and cost more than 300k euros... I did none of the work, but was very involved throughout the process - and have restored many in the past, so was very particular about certain things - panel gaps, all Porsche parts where possible... We also explored restoring a very solid 1971 S to stock, and came up with around 200k euros if we didn't need to source any parts that were missing... e.g. MFI parts, etc...

I kept a spreadsheet that lists every part and part number categorised like the Porsche Parts Book, and separate out Labor for other categories - like disassembly, body work, paint, plating, etc...

[frederik]

It does sound like labor/hour is much more in the US than in Europe (here usually $100/hr for specialist shops, more for Porsche dealership). My Targa was restored for around $70k plus $25k engine and while not perfect in details, it's holding up well. It took around a year and I thought that was a long time. LOL

Bottom line, you're not ever going to end up on top financially. Buy a finished car.

[Unobtanium-inc]

Like everyone else has said, it depends greatly on what you want the end result to be. If you're looking for a decent driver you can do things for far less than if you're looking for show quality, paint, bodywork and interior. Personally I prefer my cars be driver quality so I can drive them anywhere and not be afraid. My rule is never to have a dog or a car you're afraid of, I have Chihuahua's and driver cars as a result.
If you can let us know what you're end result will look like we can give you a more detailed info on costs. People can say, "I paid X for this level of paint and body", etc.

---Adam

[JM9090]

Three major elements will define the cost of a restoration:
- mechanical situation: engine rebuilds start at 10K, but can go up to 50K (if you want almost every part which shows wear and tear to be replaced by genuine parts. For 10K younwould get a mechanic (who knows the engine) to diassemble the engine, clean the parts, gets the parts back straight, change the seals and reassemble it. When parts are not reaworkable, costs will go up. Eg. Original cylinders at Porsche cost 1K each at Porsche.
- body workre-1977 cars have no HDG plates. So bare metal is only protected by the coated applied at the factory. Over the years, ware gets in almost any whole, which makes it rusting from inside to the outside. Even original cars kept in storage for 60 years, are prone to rust. The problem mostly is that you only see it when you start to remove the paint. Many cars also had major or minor bodywork repairs in hte past decades, whe repair techniques were not tha current level 25 years ago. What recently started as an easy repaint on my car ended in a bare metal respray, after discovering several weak (rust spots) in the sheet metal. We spent about 700 hours, just for removing paint and coatins, de-rusting, welding wholes, grinding and fattening the metal. No signs of rust or wholes were visbile when we started the job…
- finishing: while removing a lot of parts and trim, you will find parts in bad shape, which will need replacement or repair. Fr other parts, you have to decide whethe you can live with signs of age and usage, but the bill for spar parts can easily go up i, the 1000s.

Even going for a less then concourse result, with a tired engine to work upon, I can only confirm that minimum 50K needs to ne foressen if you want to get the car to a mechanic to bring the engine at acceptable performance and to have a re-spray with a minimum replacement of spare pars

[Chris Pomares]

As the previous writer said. “These cars rust from the inside out.” I can’t tell you how many cars I’ve seen bought by VERY knowledgeable Porsche folks. The cars appear to be solid from the outside and just need a paint job. Once the paint is removed repairs done when these were just $10 to $15000 old cars are revealed. One thing leads to the next and soon the whole car is apart. The challenge now is anything not restored sticks out like a sore thumb. After observing this and working on these cars my idea of a PPI has been greatly expanded. All lights and turn signals need to come off. A digital probe in the rockers, heater tubes, torsion tube, and on a SWB car, through the battery box and across the hollow part of the front pan. Unfortunately the owner isn’t going to let you or me take the engine compartment pad off or the interior off below the rear windows. Or take out all the windows. Rust turns a happy buyer into a “How did I get myself into this fix.”
A complete engine build with new parts is dirt cheap compared to derusting one of these cars and repainting.

[JFP58]

My car seemed solid and with nice paint but when I started really poking around I found a lot of Bondo and patches. Right now I’m in for $93K on just the metal work at a well known specialist. They’ll be doing the paint also and I’ll do the rest. I’m hoping the total costs will stay under $200K when all is done. Good shops in metro areas are now getting between $150 to $200 per hour. It adds up quickly!
Hopefully, your car will only need a minimal amount of metal work.

[Bradford]

The original poster of this thread has not even been on this site since they posted this question accordingly to their profile

[bob joyce]

maybe he was allergic to zeros

[Rick Cabell]

Probably suffering from sticker shock as the numbers quoted above are real.