As a very recent first generation Firebird owner (I'll trailer it--'69 convertible--across the border on Friday), after a hiatus since I sold my last '68 back in 1983, I find the preceding comments in perfect agreement with my sentiments. Over the past 20+ years my 'hobby' car has been a '65 Corvette which I bought dis-assembled, but with many NOS parts still in packages. The restoration 'trip' of painting (lacquer in a suburban garage), re-assembling and now enjoying the car during the summer, covered most of five years (but are they ever really 'finished'?). Cuts, bruises and colour sanding worn finger tips aside, the experience of restoring the car was by far the best part and rivals the enjoyment of finally driving it.
Along the way I have also made many friends and acquaintances of people who shared my interest in the hobby of classic car restoration. But unlike what I'm reading here, Corvette restoration exists along two widely divergent planes: those who actually 'do' and enjoy restoring their car, and those whose main or only interest in restoration is its impact on the car's value and what they can get for it. Very much to the credit of most posters on this board, there seems to be a majority of people here NOT primarily motivated by increasing the car's value, but rather, like myself, interested in the experience of restoration (hunting down that missing part, refinishing and re-installing original pieces, etc).
The 'down' side of this situation, unfortunately, is the still apparent dearth of quality reproductions of many (mostly cosmetic) parts to assist in restoration. Aside from fixations on maintaining absolute 'originality' of parts, an area in which the Corvette commmunity has few peers, the absence of a 'value' focus on restorations has likely slowed industry response in tooling for quality replacement parts. In time, hopefully, this will rectify itself through simple market forces of supply and demand (there were many times more early generation Firebirds and Camaros built than Corvettes).
On a final note, attending the large National Corvette Restorers' Society winter meet many years ago, I stopped to compliment the owner of a near-perfectly restored 1972 LT-1 coupe. When I asked if he had restored the car he replied that he'd 'had it restored' and went on to say at a cost of $15K. I thanked him and left wondering on what basis he would accept an award for the 'restoration', or would the award be better reflective of the depth of his pockets? This is the unfortunate state of the Corvette 'restoration' 'hobby' today...
